


I Wander In the Thousand Winds

by nayanroo



Series: In Widening Circles [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Finn is Force-sensitive, Force Bond (Star Wars), I do what I want, Multi, One-sided Reylo, Rey is a Skywalker, SHAME CRUSH ON YOUR COUSIN BEN, knights of ren hivemind, kylo ren redemption arc 2k16, plus some extra for the knights, post-Han/Leia, pre-Kylux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 17:59:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 77,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6576760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nayanroo/pseuds/nayanroo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she meets Kylo Ren in battle at a First Order comm center, Rey feels a prompting from the Force that leads her to take him prisoner.  One small act, upon which the fate of the galaxy turns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic would never have come about were it not for Anne, who has both held my hand through my whining and helped me out with some truly amazing ideas and generally been an amazing cheerleader through the whole ordeal. Without the efforts of her and [norationalthoughtrequired](http://archiveofourown.org/users/NoRationalThoughtRequired/pseuds/NoRationalThoughtRequired) this fic would certainly be poorer.
> 
> I've blended in Mara Jade Skywalker here, because I love her character and I see a lot of her resourcefulness and determination in Rey, and also because I want to.
> 
> Title (and the title of the series this work will belong to) is from a poem in the Book of Hours, a collection of poetry by Rainier Maria Rilke.

The command center was packed to overflowing and sweltering with the body heat of so many excited beings. Even though the environmental controls had been cranked up to deal with it and attempts had been made to get non-essential personnel to leave, none of it seemed to have worked, and so Leia had simply rolled up her sleeves and unzipped the top of her suit and dealt with it. She couldn't blame the Resistance for wanting to see this particular op through, for seeing their heroes in action. Stars, she'd been in that position once with all eyes on her, and now she was just the one in charge of all of it.

At the moment though, her eyes were on her twin brother. Luke had returned from his island exile with Rey, had commenced training her after some cajoling, and now had sent her off into the galaxy as a _Jedi_ , the first since... well. But there was more to his current mood than just that, of course, and Leia didn't even have to use her limited understanding of the Force to reach out to his mind. She could feel the worry rolling off him like a palpable thing. So she reached out with her hand instead, resting it on his gloved prosthetic.

“She'll be all right,” Leia told him. “This isn't her Cloud City. She's flourished, she's ready, you said it yourself.”

“I know I did, but can you blame me for not being sure?”

“If _anyone_ should have faith in Rey it's _you_.” She turned back to the holo-map of the First Order base, watching the three dots that had detached from the main group of Resistance fighters and made their way deep into the interior. “Besides, Luke, she's hardly alone.”

*

The base shook as the Resistance pilots strafed it again and Poe ducked, chunks of rock from the ceiling hitting his shoulders as he watched the corridor for approaching stormtroopers, his blaster at the ready. Ideally he'd be outside in his X-Wing, but the General had tapped him as primary pilot for this mission, and so here he was on the ground waiting for Rey to finish her technological magic with the servers in the First Order's base. With any luck they'd get the location of Snoke's bolt-hole and could end the First Order for good.

Finn had come too, and Poe looked over at him now. “How you doin' over there, buddy?” he asked. This wasn't Finn's first outing as an official member of the Resistance, but it was his first time with boots on the ground at a First Order installation since Starkiller Base, and Poe had listened to him talk quietly about nightmares enough times since he'd woken from his medical coma to know how much it all still ate at him inside.

Hell, it ate at Poe inside. The thought of someone so full of light and life as Finn alone in bed in the dark, left to deal with his own demons...

“I'd be better if _someone_ hurried _up_ ,” Finn yelled over his shoulder. He was only half-joking.

Rey's annoyed grunt made Poe grin, even as another squad of stormtroopers came barreling around into the corridor and opened fire. “I'm going as fast as I can!” Rey shouted back over the blaster fire. “Do you want this done quick or do you want it done _right?_ ”

“Just go _faster,_ please!” Finn put his blaster to his shoulder and began taking shots, making each one deliberate. Troopers – ones he might have known once – fell to the polished floor one after the other.

Poe glanced back at Rey to check on her. A year and a half of Jedi training and proper nutrition had made her move with a fluid grace and a fearsome power, but she remained her practical self, preferring to work something out with her hands and her mind before relying on her Jedi abilities. This was her first time out as a _Jedi_ , and her lightsaber glinted on her hip as her fingers flew across the keys of the terminal, loading all the data she could get her hands on to a datadisk for analysis. 

“Are you going to help me or ogle her?” Finn hissed, and Poe tore his eyes away from the ripple of strong muscles under Rey's sleeves to fire at the troopers in the corridor, taking out one that had stepped out of cover to make their own shot. 

Their earpieces crackled. “ _Bad news,_ ” Testor said. “ _Kylo Ren's shuttle just dropped out of hyperspace. Cut right through our lines and made for the planet, telemetry indicates he's headed your way. Better finish up and get out._ ”

“Rey!” Finn yelled. “We're out of time!”

A few more frenzied clicks and Rey shouted “Got it Let's go!” as soon as the last trooper fell. She came up between them, shoving the disk into a pouch on her belt and charging straight down the corridor into the next group of attackers, her lightsaber igniting in her hand.

“Oh man, this _never_ stops being cool,” Poe heard Finn murmur.

Rey had told them both about her first battle with the lightsaber, about how awkward it had felt to be using a weapon that was so deadly but had almost no weight to it. Now she seemed to handle it with practiced ease, and the blade hummed through the air as she plowed through the stormtroopers and cleared the way for the two of them to race after her through the base, heading toward their exit. If Kylo Ren was here, it was no place they wanted to be.

*

The holoprojector flared to life as his shuttle landed. 

“Kill the pilot and the traitor,” Snoke told him. “Bring _her_ to me.”

Behind his mask, Kylo Ren set his jaw. “It will be done, Supreme Leader,” he replied.

“Do not fail me again. I need not tell you of the consequences.”

Lightsaber in hand, he was off the ship before the ramp had fully lowered. This time, nothing would stop him.

*

An aide handed Leia a slip of flimsi. “From the freighter just out-system waiting for our strike team, General,” she said quietly.

When Leia read it her reaction was enough to make Luke jerk his head away from the projection they'd been watching, reaching out to rest his flesh hand on top of hers. “What is it?”

“Ben,” she whispered. “My son is there.”

*

They were a turn away from the doors when Rey halted mid-stride, her face going pale. Finn and Poe stopped too, looking back at her.

“What's wrong?” Finn asked, reaching out for her. Rey's eyes were far away though, and only slowly came back to the present.

“Finn,” she whispered, digging out the datadisk and pressing it into his palm. “You take this and keep it safe. Both of you get to the ship, get out the back way – through those vents we used. Come back for me.”

Something in the way she said that chilled both men to the bone. Poe leaned in. “What are you going to do?”

“He's here, he's waiting. For me, but he'll kill _you_ two without a thought.” Rey gave them both a smile that was shaky but true. “I won't let you put yourselves in danger, not when our mission's on the line. That intel is more valuable than me. Go on, I'll be fine, I've done this before.”

She turned and ran, and after a moment's notice Finn and Poe took off in the opposite direction, heading to their entry point in the installation's air circulation system. Finn looked back though just in time to see her disappear into the entry corridor, his stride faltering.

“Hey,” Poe said, reaching out to grab Finn's shoulder. “She'll be fine, our girl. She's strong. But we gotta get to the ship and come get her _fast._ ”

Finn swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah, she'll be fine,” he repeated, and together the two of them ran.

*

As she approached the door Rey slowed to a jog, then to a walk, until she was stopped and staring at the back of the huge blast doors, hoping that she was wrong and knowing that she wasn't. Kylo Ren, to her awakened Force senses, was like a roiling stormcloud in a clear sky, lightning crackling hot and angry around it. Rey had been in storms, and sometimes the only way out of them was through.

Thumbing the door controls, she took the first step into the tempest.

 _He_ was there, hooded and masked, his lightsaber sparking against the bright sunlight and the fires raging across the compound courtyard. Fear rose in her at the memory of their last fight but she tamped it down, keeping her lightsaber in hand as she stepped forward into the light.

“You got it to work again,” she said, tilting her chin at his lightsaber. “Did you solve the power regulation issue?”

“Stalling won't save you, scavenger.”

“I'm _not_ a scavenger anymore.”

Kylo Ren laughed, the mask making it sound tinny and mechanical. “Right,” he said, dark humor lacing his words. “You think you're a Jedi now. But I've seen your mind, you'll _never_ be more than a desert rat.”

Rey ignited her lightsaber then, circling around Ren, sizing him up. “And I've seen your mind too, remember? I've seen your fears. I've grown, but you _never_ will.”

“Is that what you think?” Ren snapped his blade up into a mock salute. “Shall we test it?”

He lunged forward and Rey blocked him, just barely getting her lightsaber up in time. She'd been confident when talking to Poe and Finn – she'd seen the worry in their eyes and it had made her ache – but now as she ground her teeth and pushed back, she was faced with the fact that the last time she'd taken on Kylo Ren he had been injured and distracted. Now he was fresh and focused, and utterly relentless. His strikes came hard and fast and pushed her back and back until they were under the eaves of the building she'd come out of, and she found herself silently calling out to Finn and Poe even though they couldn't hear her in the Force.

*

The small ship they'd taken in was waiting right where they'd left it. The _Falcon_ had been too large and noticeable, and three one-man fighters had a better chance of being spotted than one small, fast ship. 

Also, the Resistance no longer had ships to spare. There was _that_.

In the narrow cockpit Finn saw BB-8 start, then turn its domed head toward the control panel. A door popped open on the side of the craft when they were barely feet away. Poe threw himself into the ship and was up the steps to the controls. From below Finn could see his hands flying, priming the engines for takeoff. “We gotta hurry back for Rey!” he said. “This isn't gonna be smooth – hang on to something, Finn!”

Groping for one of the handholds, Finn clung to it as the ship rose up into the air. He didn't mind that the tilt of the ship was too much even for the inertial dampeners, and his feet skidded on the metal floor. For Rey, it was all worth it. “We're on our way!” he said into their commlink. “Less than a min—ugh!”

The ship jerked as Poe went evasive, the green flash of turbolasers filling the small cabin. “We're gonna be a few minutes!” he picked up. “They've got gun placements hiding in the forest, but we'll get there as fast as we can!”

“Just hang on,” Finn said quietly. Poe threw him a look over his shoulder and grinned.

“It'll be all right,” he repeated, before yanking the ship over hard and diving below another volley of blasts. Finn hung on by the door controls. When they got there, he was pretty sure they wouldn't have much time to get Rey aboard.

*

Her muscles strained as she dug her heels in against Ren's latest strike, gritting her teeth as she pushed back against him, throwing him back with a combination of her own strength and a _push_ with the Force. She didn't give him a chance to get his balance back before pressing her momentary advantage, her saber flashing out and back, testing his defenses and bringing all the ferocity she'd learned in the desert to bear on him.

It was frustrating, and disheartening; Rey felt sweat beading up on her back from the combination of mental and physical exertion, while Ren didn't seem to even be breathing hard. At least, she couldn't hear it through his mask. Who knew what the truth of him was?

“You're weak,” he hissed as she danced around him, jabbing and striking and parrying. “But you could be _strong_. I can sense it in you!”

“You think that's going to work better this time?” she retorted through clenched teeth. He blocked her strike easily and their lightsabers met again, the blades crackling where they made contact. It was... exhilarating, in a way. She seemed to know his next move just as soon as he knew what she was going to do, so for all that he'd had a lifetime with his abilities, they were evenly matched.

“Skywalker won't let you reach your full potential! He's holding you _back!_ ”

“You're _lying! _” She kicked him in the knee and he groaned and went down, but was still able to block her attacks even as he struggled to his feet. His blade flashed, now dangerously close to her midsection, and Rey was forced to retreat. Kylo Ren got back onto his feet but didn't attack right away, staying and watching her with his blade humming at his side.__

__“You feel it,” he said softly. “You feel the well of power. You've barely begun to tap into it. Join with me and I can show you how strong you can become!”_ _

__*_ _

__Poe banked hard, bringing the transport almost parallel to the ground as they came back. “There!” he said, pointing ahead to where they could see glowing beams of light, red and blue crashing against each other. “There she is! Get ready!”_ _

__Finn slapped the door controls and hung on to one of the grips, throwing his arm up against the dust that billowed in as Poe swooped low in approach, swinging their transport so that the open door was close to the fighters. Through the grit Finn could see shapes and lights flashing against each other, each strike flaring like a star gone nova. “Ready!” he shouted. “Do whatever you're gonna do!”_ _

__Up above, Poe gripped the turbolaser controls tightly. He was a good shot – a _great_ shot – but that was _Rey_ out there, and he'd never..._ _

__He took a breath, exhaled partway, and took the shot._ _

__*_ _

__“Your friends—“ Kylo Ren swung his lightsaber, a heavy double-handed strike that had her stumbling, coughing dust kicked up by the transport's repulsors, “They can't save you, they _won't_ a second time, you're coming with _me_ —“_ _

__Heat and light ignited the air, and Rey was thrown to the ground, her lightsaber deactivating as it left her hand. Rock and debris fell around her, and she stayed curled up on the ground until it stopped._ _

__“Rey! _Rey!_ ”_ _

__“Finn!” She got to her feet, saw the silvery glint of her lightsaber and called it to her hand, clipping it back to her belt. “I'm here, I'm fine.”_ _

__He came jogging out of the settling dust, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “C'mon, we need to get off planet—“_ _

__“Wait, I think...” Rey stretched, casting around, searching for... ah, there, a dark-clothed form crumpled against some supply crates. Based on the way his robes were smoking and obviously singed, he'd been very close to the turbolaser blast. She shrugged off Finn's arm and stumbled over, reaching past the layers of cloth and the metal mask to press two fingers against his throat. His pulse was a little weak but didn't seem in risk of fading anytime soon – he'd just been knocked out._ _

___Why is this important?_ Rey thought, staring down at the black and silver mask. _Why is it so important for me to take him away from here?__ _

__“What are you _doing?_ ” Finn yelled. “We gotta go, just leave him—“_ _

__She hear Poe muttering agreement in her ear in far less polite terms and waved Finn over, ignoring their combined protests. “We've got to get him to the Resistance,” she said._ _

__“Are you _insane?_ ” Finn shouted. “Did that blast scramble your brain, Rey, this is _Kylo Ren_ we're talking about—“_ _

__“I know! Look, I can't explain _why_ , it's just...” she cast about for the right word, then pressed her finger to her ear so Poe could hear too. “It feels right.”_ _

__Finn watched her for a moment, then set his jaw and nodded. “I understand. But I'm not happy about it.”_ _

__Rey grabbed one of Kylo Ren's arms and slung it over her shoulder, using the Force to help until Finn gingerly took the other arm and she could call his lightsaber to her hand and tuck it into her belt. Together they half-carried half-dragged the unconscious man over to the transport with Poe yelling in their ears the whole way._ _

__“What are you—“ Poe flung his headset down and stuck his head into the crew compartment as soon as they were aboard. “What do you think you're _doing_ , bringing _him_ on board? And don't say _it feels right_ again!”_ _

__“What else am I supposed to say?” Rey shouted back at him. They stared at each other for a minute before she ran a hand over her head._ _

__“I'm sorry,” she said. “I can't imagine how hard this is for you both. But I think... I have the feeling that we're going to need him.”_ _

__Finn was digging in the transport's medkit and paused, looking up at Poe. “She's got a point,” he said. “We've got the datadisk. What if there's information on it that only a senior officer can access? Kylo Ren has all those codes. Taking him could mean the end of the First Order.”_ _

__Poe ran a hand over his face. “What if he wakes up?”_ _

__Finn had dived back into the kit, coming back up with a hypo, which he fitted with a bottle and pressed to Kylo Ren's neck. There was the hiss of air and a soft groan from their new prisoner as he slipped deeper into unconsciousness. “He won't,” Finn said. “Unless he uses the Force to wake himself up, which...” he trailed off, looking at Rey, who shrugged. “Nope. Not gonna wake up.”_ _

__They felt pressure against the soles of their feet as Poe took off, heading back to rendezvous with the freighter that would take them home. “Thank you, Finn,” Rey said quietly. “I can watch him by myself, if you're not comfortable.”_ _

__“Don't take this the wrong way, Rey, but I'm really not.” He rested his hand on her shoulder for a moment, giving it a little squeeze. Then he climbed up to join Poe in the cockpit, and Rey was left to take up a vigil beside Kylo Ren, her lightsaber in hand, watching him._ _

___What binds us together?_ she thought. Luke had taught her enough for her to know the pull, but she could not understand it, as she understood so little. The more she learned, the less clear things seemed to be._ _

__“I hope you don't make me regret this,” she told the unconscious Ren, as they passed through the atmosphere into the blackness of space._ _

__*_ _

__“They did _what?_ ”_ _

__Luke glanced over at his sister. Leia had a headset pressed to her ear and looked a combination of shocked and angry. He suspected it had something to do with the way Rey was now broadcasting her emotions on a wide band in the Force. Confusion, anger, something else..._ _

__“How could they—what happened? No, no, don't tell me, I'll get it again at their debriefing. Is he—they did. That's all right then. Make sure he stays that way until he gets here and we can do this properly. But make sure that those three nerf herders know they'll report to me first thing. General Organa out.”_ _

__She put the headset back on the console and leaned on it heavily, her head bowed. Luke got up from where he'd been absently working on cleaning some dust out of Artoo's circuits and went to her. “What is it?”_ _

__“Your _apprentice_ ,” she said, though the way she eyed him made him know she meant the _other_ word, “Has done something that is so _foolish_...” Leia sat, staring up at him, _through_ him, for so long that Luke felt he had to reach out and take her hand to bring her back._ _

__“What is it? What's happened?”_ _

__“My son,” she whispered. “They're bringing him home.”_ _

__*_ _

__As soon as the transport landed they were greeted with a medical team. For Poe it was uncomfortably familiar, but with Finn standing beside him he could just look to the side and know that everything was all right. Or at least, as all right as it was going to be with Kylo Ren, now unmasked and with a steady drip of sedative drugs in his hand, being taken off to Medical._ _

__It had been jarring for him to see the mask removed. Rey had reached under the lip of the metal helmet, pressed some button that released it. Beneath the mask was... a man. Poe had looked down into that face, the face of the man who had tortured him and sifted through his mind until he'd gotten what he wanted, and seen nothing more than a _man_._ _

__But despite that, this man had left his dirty fingerprints all over the three of them. Rey sat on one of the narrow benches in the transport, staring down at Ren's lightsaber in her hands. His helmet rested beside her, and Poe moved it so he could sit close._ _

__“You did the right thing,” he said quietly. “It's just... still hard for me.”_ _

__“I know. I'm sorry for putting you in that position, Poe.”_ _

__Finn came and sat on her other side, and she leaned on his shoulder, her fingers still playing with the lightsaber. Her knee bumped into Poe's, and he reached over and put his arm around her. “You made the right call,” he said. “Or at least, the best call. Let's hope the General agrees with us.”_ _

__“The General wants you to explain yourselves before she makes that kind of decision.”_ _

__They all scrambled to their feet. At the foot of the ramp, General Organa stood with her arms crossed and her mouth set in a firm line. Luke Skywalker stood beside her, but he was only watching Rey with worry creases on his brow._ _

__“So,” General Organa said, staring between them. “Whose idea was this?”_ _

__Rey spoke without hesitation. “Mine, General.”_ _

__For a moment there was a curious softness to the General's features when she looked at Rey. “Why?”_ _

__“It... it felt right, General. I can't say why it did. But I think we're going to need him.”_ _

__“Rey,” Luke asked gently. “Do you think it was the Force?” Rey nodded hesitantly, and Skywalker and the General shared a look. Rey sat up straighter._ _

__“It was right,” she said stubbornly, tilting her chin up just a little._ _

__“We're not questioning you,” Luke said gently, then caught a look from his sister. “Well—I'm not, anyway. You showed great compassion for Kylo Ren. That's a trait any Jedi should have.”_ _

__“And he may prove to have valuable information, right?” Finn spoke up. “He was above all the other officers, close to the Supreme—to Snoke. He's got to know what the First Order's been up to.”_ _

__“Intel is the whole reason we went on this mission,” Poe added. “Now we've got a source. And...” he trailed off, wanting to talk about what they all knew but not wanting to be the first to say it._ _

__Luckily, General Organa caught their meaning. “I'm not mad,” she told them. “It was unexpected, but not unwelcome. Mission debrief is at 1700 for all personnel, and you three in particular I expect reports from by tomorrow morning. Is that understood?”_ _

__“Yes ma'am,” they chorused._ _

__“Good. Go get yourselves in order.”_ _

__She left, but Luke gestured to Rey. “I'd like to talk with you.”_ _

__Rey glanced back at them over her shoulder but left with her teacher, and Finn and Poe were left with Ren's helmet, the ship, and the feeling of being on the brink._ _

__*_ _

__“What do you mean, ' _He was taken'_?”_ _

__There were not many occasions for General Aldus Hux to feel fear. He was a son of the Empire, heir to that storied legacy... and clenching his fists to keep from shaking in front of the Supreme Leader. Weakness was _not_ something he could show right now._ _

__“Our base on Belsavis was raided by Resistance fighters—“_ _

__“Belsavis, where our main communications relay is for that sector?”_ _

__“...yes, Supreme Leader.” General Hux waited a moment for the slight twirling hand gesture that meant Snoke would allow him to continue. “They attacked from the air, but it was a ruse, cover for a strike team to make their way into the installation, to the data center. Our information is preliminary pending analysis, but initial reports put the Force user Rey on site, accompanied by FN-2187 and pilot Poe Dameron.”_ _

__“These people are annoying me more and more,” Snoke rumbled. “But none of this answers my question.”_ _

__“Kylo Ren insisted on going to the base himself to subdue the Resistance and capture or kill the strike team members. We have confirmation that he landed, and his pilots say that he engaged the girl shortly thereafter, but the Resistance transport carrying the team appeared on the scene and fired its turbolasers, and when the debris and dust cleared, neither ship nor fighters were to be seen. The troopers on board the shuttle searched the area, but could not find Kylo Ren.”_ _

__Snoke's hologram pounded the arm of the chair. Through the hyperwave connection, Hux could almost feel the reverberations, even though this was actually happening thousands of light-years away. He kept himself from flinching, at least. _That_ would have been an unforgivable sin._ _

__“We are calculating their return vector now, Supreme Leader, but the Resistance has grown extremely canny since the destruction of the Hosnian system, and our own forces are just now falling into a coherent enough command after Starkiller Base. But I will send probes out to possible systems and monitor their reports personally.”_ _

__“I sense that Kylo Ren is not in immediate danger,” Snoke said, and General Hux continued to keep his face carefully neutral. Snoke's political ideologies were beyond reproach, but this mystical nonsense held little interest for him. “But his presence is clouded, obscured by other powers around him. Search carefully, General. I will not have him in the hands of the enemy for too long.”_ _

__“It will be done, Supreme Leader.” Hux bowed as the hologram faded away._ _

___You're more trouble than you're worth, Ren,_ he thought._ _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic would never have come about were it not for Anne, who has both held my hand through my whining and helped me out with some truly amazing ideas and generally been an amazing cheerleader through the whole ordeal. Without the efforts of her and [norationalthoughtrequired](http://archiveofourown.org/users/NoRationalThoughtRequired/pseuds/NoRationalThoughtRequired) this fic would certainly be poorer.
> 
> As this fic is about 95% finished, I'm going to try to post one chapter every weekend. Life may get in the way, but that's my goal for this one.
> 
> Enjoy!

Once the medical staff had checked the sedative drip and made sure his vitals were steady, they had cleared the room where Kylo Ren had been secured. Guards were posted outside the door – droid guards, as knowledge of his ability to immobilize beings with the Force was well-known.

Sitting beside the pallet he'd been laid on, Leia had brought no guards, no weapons. If she was to be killed by her own son, she would face him head-on, make him look at her when he did it.

Ben (she couldn't think of him as Kylo Ren) lay still, breathing slow and deep and steady. Her hand only trembled a little bit when she reached out and stroked his hair back from his forehead, smoothing the dark strands over the thin pillow. His face relaxed, he almost looked like the boy she had known so long ago, the boy she'd sent off to train with Luke... the boy who had never come home.

_I failed you,_ she thought. _I thought Luke could protect you as well as I could until you could protect yourself. I am so, so sorry._

She slipped her hand around his limp one, bringing it up to her lips. The palm was calloused in the way of saber users – she remembered Luke's hands having the same pattern – but it was also crossed with fine scars and healed burns, faded marks of old injuries that had been allowed to heal without Bacta intervention. She touched them with a fingertip, wondering, wondering what her son had been through to make him who he was, to drive him to _patricide_ of all things. Not that she'd have put it past Snoke to insinuate that doing so would help Ben on his way to power – Snoke had been a _sleemo_ long before he'd outed himself to her as an adherent of the dark side – but Ben had still been the one holding the saber.

Cautiously, Leia reached out with her mind. She had never had the time to hone her Jedi powers, nor the desire, but this was more of an instinct, something left of the bond between mother and child. She had not touched Ben since that terrible day on Starkiller Base, and he had barely felt like her son. She had to know, though. She had to know if anything of their boy remained.

Her fingers brushed his jaw, his cheek, and she pressed her mind against his. It was like looking out over a restless sea, one tossed by a far distant storm; Leia stood on the brink and watched as the waves of her son's mind crashed on the rocks, and the harder she tried to calm them, the higher they rose until they engulfed her. She was drowning, and the water was cold and turbulent, and when she surfaced her face was lashed by rain, sheets of it coming down across the ground that was littered with bodies, and a thin sound rose above the noise, the sound of a child crying in fear—

Leia gasped and snapped back into herself. Ben still slept, but she found she could not stay at his side any longer.

*

Dantooine was mostly dusty plains, long pale green grasses rustling against each other, but here and there the terrain became hills covered in deciduous forests and rocky outcroppings, foothills giving way to mountains. In the days of the Empire there had been a rebel base here, but those ruins were far off to the east. The Resistance made its home in a cave system set into a long expanse of stone thrust up from the bedrock by some seismic event ages ago. Their equipment occasionally registered small groundquakes, but nothing more. 

The bedrock masked their life signatures from orbital scans, and the caves had been hollowed out to fit most of the snubfighters inside. The larger ships were hidden with camo nets and sensor-dampening mesh if not needed for a long time. There wasn't much they could do to hide the landing pads, but with strict policies about traffic in and out of the system and circuitous hyperspace routes to return to base, they kept their chances of discovery low.

Luke had walked with Rey up to the edge of the cliff overlooking the base entrance, and now they sat with their legs dangling off the edge, watching the activity below. Chewbacca had uncovered the _Falcon_ and was clanging around on her hull assisted by a bevy of very patient droids (supervised by Artoo). The transport they'd taken to Belsavis was undergoing a post-mission once-over not far away. As Rey watched, two figures emerged from inside and headed underground. Despite her resolve that what she had done was right, she couldn't help but feel a stab of guilt. What right did she have to put them in such close contact with someone who had tormented them both?

Beside her, Luke stirred. “While my sister's right in saying that it was incredibly foolish – and neither she nor I mean foolishly _brave_ , mind – to bring Kylo Ren here, if you feel it was right, then it was right. The will of the Force moves through all of us, and sometimes, or, well, a _lot_ of the time, we don't understand why it does what it does until we can see the bigger picture. I trust you enough to accept that, and so do Finn and Poe.”

“He's put them through so much,” she whispered, her hands clenching in her trousers. “He's been in my _head._ But... I'm not afraid of him. He has enough fear for himself.”

“I forget, you were in his mind, too.”

“I _can't_ forget.” Rey wondered if she could touch Kylo Ren's mind willingly, even though he had been under since they'd dragged him onto their ship, but a sudden queasy feeling in her stomach made her shudder away from even trying. His mind was turned in on itself, so tightly knotted she wondered if it could ever be undone, and she wanted none of that.

“Don't. Forgetting means losing that compassion that made you bring him here in the first place, and Kylo Ren needs that.”

“He's so alone. Like I was.”

Luke slumped a little, a wave of sadness rippling off him. “He's been isolated from any kind of light for so long. It started before he ever came to train with me, and none of us could understand before it was too late...”

He trailed off, but Rey's curiosity had been piqued. “Stop what? What happened?”

Luke's throat worked for a moment before he could reply. “When Kylo Ren was born – when he was Ben – Leia and I could tell he'd be extremely strong in the Force. But we weren't the only ones who knew.”

“Snoke.”

“We don't know exactly, but Leia didn't keep her pregnancy a secret – she had no reason to – and anyone who knew she and I were siblings and knew the name Skywalker from the Clone Wars could put two and two together. Or maybe he had a spy, the war was one of information back then... but it doesn't matter. By the time we figured out that Snoke had been whispering in Ben's ear, so to speak, since he was young... it was too late. We made the wrong choices. _I_ made the wrong choices.”

He grew silent and sorrowful, and it twisted something in her heart.

“You said you think you'll need him for something,” Luke continued at last. “Do you know what that could be?”

Rey closed her eyes, tried to cast her mind back to the place it had been in when she'd spoken those words, when she'd looked at Kylo Ren crumpled on the ground before her and had shown mercy rather than striking him down. “No,” she murmured. “I'm sorry, Master, I don't.”

“I think when the time comes, you'll know. It's a gift we share.” Luke reached over and covered her hand with his. There was something in his voice, a rippling in his mind that made her think he was about to say something... but then the moment passed and his mind calmed and he gave her hand a squeeze and let go. “Remember, Rey, there are very few in this galaxy who are truly beyond hope, and those who are in pain need us most of all. I can't teach you how to show compassion or know when you ought to reach out a hand rather than a saber, but I can tell you to trust in your own heart. It's never led you astray.”

*

Late that night, Luke found his way into his sister's office. He didn't need to knock; a gentle brush of his mind against Leia's, and he was welcomed in.

“Still awake?”

“Couldn't sleep.” Luke took a seat, leaning his elbows heavily on her desk. “Thinking too much, I guess.”

Leia set her stylus down, tucking her datapad into its charging cradle. “You didn't tell her. _Again._ ”

“She's confused enough, she doesn't need me adding to it.”

“Maybe you don't know _what_ she needs.” When Luke made a face, Leia raised her eyebrows at him. “I think you gave up the right to be offended about that fifteen years ago.”

“I was trying to protect her! The First Order was hunting Jedi, Force-sensitives... I couldn't let them have her. If Snoke found out who she was—“

“How do you know he hasn't already? Lest we forget, Snoke's had my son eating out of his hand for most of his life, and my son was there when Rey was _born._ And there's... you know.”

“ _She_ hasn't been caught. I would know.”

“You haven't heard from her in years.”

“Probably because she was mad at me. _Really_ mad.”

“True.” Leia reached out, and Luke took her hand. No matter who had come after or what had come before, he had this bond. They had come into the world together and they wouldn't be separated again. He wouldn't make that mistake twice. “Luke... I just don't want you to have to deal with the regrets I have, knowing you could have said or done something when it would have helped and not doing it. Rey needs to know.”

He exhaled, long and slow. “I'll do it when it's right.”

“As long as you do it.” Leia smiled at him. “You need each other, I think. Rey needs a family, and you... you need to remember what it's like to love.”

“I've got you,” Luke said. “I can't forget.”

“Flattery will only get you so far.” She shut off her console and the office lights and linked arms with him. “I think it's time for bed. We've got to rest to keep up with those three damned hotshots running around this place.”

*

Rey couldn't sleep.

She'd tried everything – envisioning the windswept island where she had begun her journey as a Jedi, meditation, everything short of going to the med staff and begging sleeping aids off them. But sleep eluded her, and finally she tossed the thermal blanket off, pacing back and forth until she couldn't take it anymore.

Finn answered his door on the second ping, his eyes widening when he saw it was her. “Is everything okay?” he asked, stepping aside to let her in. “Is it Kylo Ren? Is he—“

“Yes. No.” Rey fisted her hands in her hair, and Finn wrapped an arm around her waist, guiding her to sit on his bed. She could feel the concern rolling off him, and leaned over, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. Finn was steadfast, like the rock of their home, and she needed stability now.

“If you still feel bad about putting him so close to us...” Finn shifted his arm so it was around her shoulders, and slowly the sandstorm of her mind began to calm in the face of his warmth. “Poe and I talked about it, while you and Luke, er, Master Skywalker were off. We want you to know we're okay. You don't have to worry about us.”

“I know I don't _have_ to.” Rey made a face against his skin. “But I do. You're the first friends I've ever had in my whole life, and I don't want to hurt you.”

There was some burr in his mind – she could sense it, close to the surface as it was, but she refused to dig further – but Finn didn't bring it up. “We know. But we'll keep telling you until you can tell yourself.” He paused. “Would it help you sleep if you stayed here?”

Rey thought about this, about listening to the slow, steady breathing of her friend, the comfort his presence brought her, and nodded. Being here was preferable to being in her own room with her thoughts. Finn drew away and set about pulling out blankets and a field cot that snapped upright with a touch. He nudged it next to the bed and tossed a pillow down onto it.

“I'll be right here,” he said, when they'd both settled back down and dimmed the room lights. “If you need anything.”

Rey nestled down in the bed and felt herself relax a little more, until she was watching Finn through slitted eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“You don't have to carry the galaxy alone just because you're a Jedi,” Finn said. The dim light from the glow panels caught in his eyes, glittering deep within. “You'll always have me. Even if you do kriffing _insane_ things like dragging unconscious dark side users into Resistance bases.”

She snorted and edged her pillow over closer to the edge of the bed. “Stranger things have happened.”

“Strange things have _been_ happening since the moment I set foot on that dusty junkyard you come from.” Finn smiled and something in her chest melted, and Rey closed her eyes that she might hold that image in her mind. 

“ _Good_ strange, though,” she heard Finn mumble into his pillow, and drifted off feeling warm.

*

Finn woke to pounding on his door, reached for his chrono and fell off the cot instead. “Wuh,” he mumbled, sitting up and rubbing his face. “Whozzat?”

“It's Poe,” a muffled voice said. “Did you forget?”

Finn was momentarily distracted when he cast about for the reason he was in the cot and not his bed and found Rey still asleep and curled up tightly on her side, her hair shifting with every breath. Another insistent knock from Poe brought him back. “Forget wh—oh, _kriff!_ Report!”

He scrambled up, rousing Rey with his sudden racket. She jolted upright, knocked her head on the ceiling of his bunk and yelped.

“Was that a _woman?_ ” Poe asked through the door.

“You'd better let him in,” Rey grumbled, the heel of a palm pressed to her head. “Otherwise half the base is going to get ideas.”

Finn slapped his hand on the door controls as he breezed by on his way to grab fresh clothes out of his trunk and Poe swept in, followed by BB-8. Both of them drew up short when they saw Rey in the bed. “Finn,” Poe said, “You _sly dog._ ”

“It's not like that!” Finn yelled, pulling a pair of black pants on. “Rey couldn't sleep and so she came here.”

Rey was eying Poe with what Finn thought of as her Jedi Look, and for a moment he wished he too was a Jedi so he could know what she was sussing out. “I spent fourteen years of my life alone in Jakku,” she said at last. “But I've spent the last year around people. Sometimes being alone... pushes in. I don't like it anymore.”

The pilot went quiet at that, and BB-8 beeped solemnly, his domed head swiveling downward. Rey looked between them and sighed, getting up and stretching. In his mirror, Finn watched her, watched the way her muscles moved under her sleeveless top. 

“I'm going to go wash up and see if Master Skywalker needs me,” she said, weaving between the cot and the bed on her way to the door. “Meet in the mess for breakfast?”

“Of course,” Poe replied, Finn right behind him. She flashed them both a grin as she slipped out of the room, and as soon as she was gone Poe turned a grin of his own on Finn. “So, you and Rey?”

“It's not like that,” Finn repeated, picking up his datapad. “She really just needed to be around someone. This stuff with Kylo Ren's got all of us off balance, but I think it's affecting her more.”

“Probably some weird Force thing. Is yours done? I'll take it to the General with mine.”

“Almost.” Finn tapped a few more buttons, then copied it over to a datacard and handed that over to Poe. “Breakfast?”

“As soon as these are on the General's desk.”

“See you there.”

*

BB-8 blatted something _extremely_ pointed as soon as they left Finn's quarters. 

“Look,” Poe said, throwing up his hands. “I thought I knew what was going on. How was I supposed to know they had a thing for each other?”

Querying beep.

“No, I'm not jealous.”

The droid made another rude noise, and Poe shot it a look. “What did you just call me?” Another beep, and he made an exasperated noise as they made their way toward the command officers' areas of the base. 

“You've picked up some _really_ bad habits from Artoo.”

*

The mood in the conference room was tense. Most of the Resistance leadership was either there or appearing in holoprojector form, and when Rey, Finn, and Poe took their seats partway down the table, Leia finally called the room to order.

“I think we all know why we're here, as there's been some... _disagreements_ over what to do with Be—with Kylo Ren. I will not condone keeping him sedated for much longer, and the intelligence he could provide would, as has been pointed out, speed this war to its end. With the Republic still reeling from the destruction of the Hosnian system, any advantage we can get is key. We're still going through the data brought back from the raid on Belsavis, but we've already encountered encryption we're having trouble breaking. It would be easier to have access codes, rather than risk destruction and loss of data by attempting to slice in. So. Thoughts?”

It got ugly more than once. Kylo Ren, regardless of his parentage, was the enemy, and there were several who argued that any leniency he got was a result of that. Others agreed that his knowledge of the First Order could be put to good use, but should not be counted against future sentencing for his crimes. Through it all, Rey and Luke could only add their feelings – Rey's feeling, precisely – that Kylo Ren was meant to be captured, that the Force had something in the works, but when they had to go begging every other standard month for supplies, the potential designs of a power that most beings in the galaxy could only know of in theory was not a high priority.

In the end, though, Leia tallied final votes and slumped a bit in her seat as she read their decision, exhausted but quite pleased. “Kylo Ren will be allowed to awaken,” she read. “He will be given the choice between... between immediate trial for treasonous acts against the Republic, a crime punishable by death, or giving information aiding in the downfall of the First Order, with any benefits of such cooperation being determined by an impartial authority at a later time. He will be restrained and will enjoy no creature comforts he doesn't earn through cooperation and good behavior, as is standard for prisoners of war.” Her voice cracked slightly – despite everything he had done, he was still her child, her baby – but she kept her chin up. “It is so decided.”

Beside him, Poe could feel Finn go tense, and reached over to put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey,” he murmured, as those sitting or projected to be at the table rustled around for a moment. “You okay, buddy?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I'm...” Finn took a breath, and Rey looked over now, leaning just a bit so their shoulders brushed. “No, I'm not.”

“You don't have to have anything to do with him if you don't want to,” Poe told him. “They won't make you, and if they try, Rey and I won't let them. Right?” He leaned around Finn to catch Rey's eye, and she nodded solemnly, turning to catch her teacher's eye.

Luke took the hint. “I think you should take the day off,” he told her. “If I were in your position I wouldn't be able to focus enough to lift a twig. If there's anything decided that you need to know, Leia or I will fill you in.”

Poe didn't have to be Force-sensitive to feel the gratitude rolling off her. “If there's nothing else you need us for, General,” he said, rising from his seat, “May we head out?”

“Yes, of course. Dismissed, Dameron and company.” She gave Finn and Rey gentle smiles. Still, once they'd left the conference room and the door had closed behind them, all three let out long relieved sighs.

“I don't know about you two,” Poe said, “But I need to get some distance from here. If they're going to let him wake up.”

“I don't think it'll much matter for me,” Rey murmured, but despite questioning glances from both of them she refused to elaborate. “But a trip sounds good to me.”

“How about that lake a few klicks north? It's far enough away that we won't be stumbled on, still within comm range...”

Half a standard hour later they were crammed into a speeder heading north into the mountain range. Finn was piloting and doing a damn good job of it, grinning with his success, and Poe felt proud for his part in his friend's progress. In the passenger seat behind him, an arm looped around BB-8's spherical body, Rey had closed her eyes and turned her face to the sun. The wind whipped the dark tendrils of her hair around her face, and Poe felt an ache deep in his heart. Sure they'd been in separate beds, but he could tell that Finn had feelings for Rey – had known it from the day they'd gone to Starkiller Base – and couldn't help but wonder. What if he'd sorted out how he'd felt faster?

He realized Rey had opened her eyes and was looking at him quizzically, and turned back around. He wouldn't ruin their time off with dark thoughts, not when so much seemed to be in turmoil.

*

Luke was a calming presence at her side as Leia walked through the corridors of the base. The medbay was tucked deep in the bedrock, protected, and thus a bit of a hike from the command center and offices. She knew it was a good decision, but it also gave her time to think, to feel the echo of her worry through her reestablished bond with Luke as they entered the private room that had two guards posted outside it. Their tension rippled off them like a dissonant chord and without thinking, Leia reached out to soothe their minds, revitalize them. She had not chosen Luke's path, but that hardly meant she hadn't found a use for her Force ability.

Doctor Kalonia was inside with her medical team and more guards. They'd changed out Ben's black robes and form-fitting suit for a tunic and loose pants once they'd discovered his belt had a First Order tracker in it, and she was glad to see the neutral color took some of the pallor out of his skin. Leia cleared her throat, and the doctor looked up.

“We have a counteragent for what he's been given, but the process won't be instant. It could take a few hours for him to wake up, General.”

“That's fine.” Leia sat, back straight, chin up, just like Breha had taught her so long ago. “I want to be here when he does.”

The doctor nodded, and set to work. She stopped the flow of sedative and removed the drip, then pressed a hypospray to Ben's throat. There was the hiss of gas as the dose was administered, and then she stepped back.

“I've got his vitals linked to my datapad,” she said, “But they'll read out right over here on this screen too. When he starts to wake up, we'll know. I'll be back when he does.”

The medical staff left the room, and after a moment Luke put his hand on her shoulder. “I don't think I should be here when he wakes up,” her brother said. He sounded (and felt) very sad. “Ben and I didn't exactly part on the best terms.”

Leia snorted. “It's probably best if it's just me,” she agreed.

“Call if you need me?”

“I will.” She reached up, resting her hand on top of Luke's. “Don't get too deep in your own head, Luke.”

He left, and Leia leaned forward on her elbows, her hands wrapping around one of Ben's. She doubted he'd let her hold it after he awoke, and she wanted to remember how it felt, how broad and strong his hands were as an adult, in case she didn't get another chance.

“I'll be here when you wake up,” she murmured. “I promise.”

*

The lake was nestled in a rocky glacial valley, and when she wanted a break, Rey hauled herself out onto a flat-topped boulder next to Poe. The remains of their picnic lunch were carelessly piled behind them (Finn had wanted to neatly pack them away right after but both Rey and Poe had told him to leave off, to just relax, and with a rueful grin he'd done so, and Rey had thought it not exactly Jedi-like to admire the way Finn's muscles moved as he'd lain back down on the boulder or the way Poe's hair had fallen in his eyes while he laughed, but she'd not been a Jedi until a year ago anyway), but her towel was right where she'd laid it, sun-warm and inviting when she flopped down on her side. For all the stress of the morning, it was pleasant to lay in the sun, listening to BB-8 beeping away to itself as it explored the shoreline and watching Finn swim lazy laps around an offshore rock outcropping, looking for a way up onto it.

It felt like the still calm before a violent sandstorm in her mind, but she'd enjoy it while it lasted, anyway.

“So,” Poe said, after they'd both watched Finn make three more laps and unsuccessfully try to surge up out of the water to grab a handhold. “You and Finn, huh?”

She hadn't missed the odd ripples of emotion coming off the pilot. One of the most disconcerting things about opening herself up to the Force had been the sudden influx of _feelings_ from _everyone_ , and it seemed she was more in tune with those closest to her. It made her uncomfortable, like she was invading their privacy, but it balanced out the feelings of sudden terror coming from a distant planet the First Order was attacking, or the odd, indescribable spikes of pain and rage and fear she'd occasionally feel. Those felt familiar, like she knew the source, but every time she tried to grasp at it, it slipped away again.

But it was Poe who was centered in her mind and heart right now, Poe who was trying so hard to sound casual when inside he seemed anything but. “What?”

“I mean, I'm just guessing, but usually when two people share quarters—“

“It wasn't like that,” Rey protested. “I had trouble sleeping. Finn wanted to help, and it helped me to be close to someone.”

She watched Finn swim, though, and thought of how much more calming it would have been to nestle against his chest, to feel warm and safe and share the burden of vigilance for just a few hours. It wouldn't be so bad to let Poe have her back, either, when she thought about it. He'd been sad on the trip out, lost in thoughts tinged with loneliness, and Rey had wanted nothing more than to soothe those from him. Poe had become a good friend, one who took her out to the X-Wings and let her climb around on them and answered all her questions and had been so _warm_ and _friendly_ that she'd felt welcome. Poe could be comfortable, too, she'd decided a long time ago. Just as much, and just in the same way as Finn.

Poe was searching her face for something, and when he didn't find whatever he was looking for, there was an intense wave of... her brow furrowed. Relief? Mixed with... hope?

“But. I mean. Do you like him?”

Rey gave him a look. “Of _course_ I like him, laser brain. I like you both. What _kind_ of question—“

“I mean _romantically._ ”

“So do I.”

“What.”

“...what?”

“Hey, Poe! Rey!”

They turned to see Finn charging up out of the water, looking gleeful. “I think I found a way to get up on those rocks but one of us needs to be a boost, there's a rock right nearby under the water but it's not quite tall enough to get up there without someone helping...” he trailed off, looking between the two of them. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing.” Rey rolled off her towel and waded back in. “I think I can do one better than a leg up, Finn...”

They swam out to the submerged rock. Rey got her feet under her, gathered her strength, and used the Force to spring gracefully out of the water onto the top of the outcropping, much to the delight of both Poe and Finn. (They didn't need to know she'd used the Force to stay balanced.)

Looking down at them standing on the rock, she felt a surge of affection. They had been so understanding. She had no idea how to repay them.

“Hey,” Finn said, looking up at her. “You gonna help us up or what?”

“Right. Sorry.” Rey concentrated, imagining the Force as a gentle net wrapping around Finn, cradling him, and lifted him up into the air. He looked surprised, but trusted her wholeheartedly, and gave her a huge grin that made her stomach flip over when she set him down beside her. 

“That was _amazing,_ ” he breathed. “Bring Poe up now! He has to feel that!”

She did, and Poe's eyes were huge when his feet touched down on the rock on her other side. 

“That,” he said, “Was like absolutely nothing else I have ever experienced. That was _better_ than flying. Rey...”

There was something in his eyes and Rey felt her mouth go dry and her palms begin to itch with the desire to take his face in her hands. Beside her, Finn shifted, his feet scuffing against the rock, and the feeling did not subside but only shifted target.

Not really Jedi-like at all, but Master Luke had taught her the ways of the old Order with the look of someone who had seen the consequences of their mistakes. Still... it would be an odd position, and she had no idea if they would be agreeable, and if her odd conversation with Poe a few minutes ago was any indication none of them had any idea what they were doing anyway. So Rey did her best to tuck her feelings away, and sat on the rock, dangling her legs off the side. A moment later, the two men followed suit, and together they looked out over the serene lake. Rey closed her eyes again, letting the wind stir her damp hair, feeling the sun warm her in a way that was far gentler than on Jakku.

It happened so slowly she didn't notice at first. She'd thought the sun was shifting, but it was the pads of Finn's fingers on the back of her hand that warmed her in a different way, the way Poe shifted so his arm was behind her back, fingertips brushing Finn's wrist that fanned that warmth into something that was not gentle, not sand-harsh, but burned pleasantly. Rey opened her eyes to see Finn looking at Poe in surprise, Poe looking at her in that same hopeful-speculating way he had before, and the itch in her palms was back. 

_What could it hurt,_ she thought, and turned her hand so it was palm to palm with Finn's and she could hook one of Poe's fingers with two of hers.

“Guys?” Finn whispered, so softly it was barely audible over the lapping of water against rock. “What... what is this?”

“I don't know,” Poe replied, his voice husky. Rey curled her toes.

“I like it,” she said simply. But right when the tension seemed about to resolve, she felt it. Distinct from what she was feeling here, now, darker. Twisting, she looked over her shoulder, right where she knew the base was. Where she knew _he_ was.

“What is it?” Finn asked. He was looking in the same direction, then looking at her, his brow wrinkled with worry. Rey's heart skipped a beat, but not because of either of them.

“It's him,” she whispered. “He's awake.”

The edge of the sandstorm had come.

*

When they had all been much younger, Leia had been able to know when her son was going to awaken before he ever cracked an eye. There had been times in the middle of the night when it had jolted her out of a sound sleep, moments before Ben's wails had filled their apartment on whatever planet was hosting the Republic's capitol. As he'd gotten older, the rude awakenings had gotten more and more disorienting for her and his nightmares had grown deeper and darker.

If only, if _only_... but wishing now would change nothing that had happened.

Still, the faint brush of sensation was still there, ghosting over her mind like fingertips. Leia sat up, watching as the monitors registered changes in brain activity, heart rate, breathing. Before he awakened fully she withdrew her hand, curling it in her lap to preserve the feeling of warmth, and by the time Ben opened his eyes, blinking days' worth of crust from them, Leia had schooled herself into the calm leader that Breha had taught her to be. Still, something in her belly ached to look upon him again, to see how adulthood had rendered him angular, filled out or smoothed lines that had been gangly in his adolescence. Han had always insisted that he had her eyes, though, warm and caring as often as they were sharp and angry.

It was those eyes that turned to her now, narrowed slightly as he turned his wrists. When he spoke, his voice was a deep tenor.

“You haven't restrained me, General.”

General, not _mother_ or even _Leia._ She set it aside, brushed off Luke's querying mental push. She would handle this until she could not any longer. “We didn't think there was a point. You'd just use the Force to undo them.”

He sat up – the guards tensed, but didn't move closer. Leia stayed still and watched him smooth calloused fingertips over the bacta patch on the back of one hand, the needle marks not quite disappeared yet. “I'm surprised you let them do this.”

“Would you have come willingly?”

“No.”

“Then there you have it, Ben.” She wished she hadn't made the slip instantly, but ignored the ominous rattle of the monitors. She and Han had given him that name a minute after he'd screamed his entrance into the galaxy, and he would hear no other name from her lips. “I wasn't happy about it, though.”

Doctor Kalonia poked her head into the room, raising an eyebrow at Leia. “Should I come back?” she whispered.

Ben had turned to look at one of the walls, his brow furrowed, and Leia nodded. Kalonia withdrew near-silently.

“It was her,” he said softly. “She's the one who brought me here. The _scavenger._ Why?”

“You'll have to ask Rey.” _Though I'm not sure she herself knows._ Luke had had some ideas about it, but neither of them had known for sure. “If she feels like talking to you.”

He looked at her then, really looked at her, and despite everything Leia's heart broke again. He could dampen it in the Force, cut her off, prevent her from feeling it, but he could not hide the dullness of his eyes, the way the sparkle in them had dimmed until it was little more than a guttering flame all but extinguished. _Damn you, Snoke, for taking my child away from me and turning him into this._

“What will you do with me now, General? There's no Republic to put me on trial anymore.”

“The First Order will not win out over the ideals of the Republic. Enough of us survived. Enough of us believe.” Leia drew in a breath. “Your circumstances depend on whether or not you'll give us information about the First Order – military information, supply lines, future plans. We gathered a huge amount of data from Belsavis, but some of it requires high-level codes, which we assume you know.”

There was amusement in Ben's voice, though his eyes remained humorless. “I know them. What makes you think I'll give them to you?”

“It's what will keep the rest of the Resistance leadership from ordering you to trial.”

“I don't care about the Resistance, or the Republic.” Ben turned away from her. “The Supreme Leader will find me and destroy you all,” he said, and there was such conviction behind his words. “His vision is the only one that will benefit the galaxy. The Republic was full of greed and chaos, but we... we will bring order to the galaxy once more. I'm done talking to you, General. The doctor can come in now.”

Leia rose, but did not leave right away. It had been so long, and her heart had been so broken... she reached out with a hand, resting it on his broad back. As she had when he was little and had woken up screaming, she pressed love, comfort, kindness into him. It was not the time for her anger or her sadness, after all. Her child was hurting and she would not add to it. Ben tensed under her hand, and the monitors rattled, and some of the smaller instruments crumpled at the edges, but Leia stubbornly kept her hand where it was.

“I missed you, Ben,” she whispered. “I'm so glad to have you back.”

She left before she said anything more.

*

The monitors in the security center showed Kylo Ren sitting perfectly still as the door closed.

He didn't move as every loose item in the room compressed downward into dense, crumpled balls.

*

They'd resisted coming back until Rey's comm had chirped with a message, causing BB-8 to wail loudly enough to reach them far out onto the lake. That had gotten them to swim to shore and climb back into the speeder, making the trip back slowly and unwillingly. The moment on the rock had rendered them all pensive, and Rey could feel their thoughts tickling against her mind. Poe had volunteered to pilot them back, and with the turmoil in her heart and her head right now, Rey was glad she'd let him.

When they got back Luke was waiting for them by the main entrance, looking worried and feeling worse in his Force presence. He reached out for her hands when she jogged over, his calloused fingers squeezing them a bit before letting go.

“He's awake,” Luke said. “You felt it?”

“Yes. What's he done? The message I got was rather vague.”

Luke drew in a breath. “We'd like you down in Security. He's... made a request.” They started, but he paused, looking back at Finn and Poe hovering behind Rey. “If I told them not to come along you'd just tell them later, wouldn't you?”

“Probably.”

“In that case, Finn, Poe, if you'd like to come I won't let them stop you from accompanying us.”

The two men looked at each other, and something in Rey's stomach eased when they both nodded and stepped closer. “We'll do it,” Finn said, sounding far more confident than he was projecting.

“As long as I don't have to talk to him myself, I'm fine.” Poe looked a little ashen under his tanned skin, but set his jaw bravely. Rey wanted to hug him, soothe the dull rising panic from his mind, but settled for giving him a grateful smile that he returned almost instantly. 

Luke nodded. “Follow me, then.”

Out of habit Rey fell into step beside him, her usual place as Jedi-in-training, but rather wished she hadn't when Luke leaned over and whispered, “So, I sensed a lot of emotion flooding out of you earlier today.”

“Is that bad?”

“You weren't in any danger, were you?”

“No. And you know I can handle myself in a fight, anyway.”

“I know. I just need to be sure. You're my, my student, and one of the few Jedi left, and besides all that, I don't want anything to happen to you.”

Even a year on, she couldn't help the warm glow that rose in her chest any time someone worried about her. One year couldn't erase fourteen previous. “I'm fine, Master Luke. Finn and Poe were there, anyway, and between the three of us we can take on anything.”

The corner of his lips twitched. “The confidence the three of you have keeps us all young, Rey. Just remember to be mindful of where you are, and don't get cocky. But I know you trust them, and you have good judgment.”

“Well, I brought Kylo Ren _here_ , so...”

“That may not have been a bad thing,” Luke murmured as they turned into the control room for base security, weaving through consoles and stepping over bundled wires until they reached a panel where Leia and a tech were watching a holoprojection replay. She looked up as Luke approached with the three of them in tow.

“Good, you're here,” she said. “I'm sorry to have called you three back, but... well, you'll see. Rey, especially. Bring up the feed, please.”

“Should we have someone go in again, General?”

“No, I don't think that'll be necessary.”

The holoprojector showed Kylo Ren sitting on the pallet in the medical room he'd been secured inside temporarily. It seemed far more barren than she remembered – the monitors were gone, and there was almost nothing else in the room that wasn't bolted down, and that seemed to have suffered some kind of attack as it all appeared dented and scraped. Kylo Ren was cross-legged and straight-backed, meditating.

The act of being still was not something that had come easily to Rey, used as she was to constant necessary motion, but once she'd grasped it she'd found it incredibly useful in helping control her new abilities. From shutting out the constant flow of outside emotions to being able to lift and push things with the Force, it had helped her find a calm center to the storm of her world with the Force. More than that, it had helped her feel a connection to life, a reassurance that no matter what, she would never truly be alone again.

Curious, Rey reached out to see if she might touch Kylo Ren's mind, see what he was like when he meditated. When he'd been rifling through her mind for the map, she'd not only sensed his feelings of inadequacy but his crushing loneliness. When he'd been describing her, he'd also been describing himself. Perhaps if he could be shown that he was being foolish, that he didn't have to be so alone, he might find some peace.

His mind was the sandstorm she'd thought it was before, but now that she knew what to look for Rey could find it. He was lonely, but he was reaching out too – not to her, but to something else, something she could only sense as a void. It gave off a feeling of such wrongness that bile rose in her throat, and Rey tightened her fingers on the back of the chair she gripped. He obviously didn't think of it as a void, otherwise he wouldn't be clawing to get at it, but something kept blocking him. She was glad for that. He didn't belong there. _Nothing_ belonged there. The thing itself was _wrong,_ and so Rey reached in and _swatted_ the void away from his mind like she was brushing sand flies off her food. He didn't need whatever that thing was.

Immediately Kylo Ren became angry – too tame a word, for the sandstorm had suddenly increased in ferocity, and Rey flung up a mental shield to protect herself from the onslaught. Indignantly he demanded to know how she'd gotten in, _why_ she was here, what she was doing trying to stop him.

_You let me in, how else?_ Rey thought, and edged it with a bit of tartness. _Get away from that thing, it's vile._

_It's_ everything, Kylo Ren told her. _But I can't reach it alone. Together we could—_

_I'll have no part of it!_ Rey ground her teeth and _pulled_ , latching her will like hooks into his mind and hauling him back. The void moved then, groaning and reaching tendrils out to try and grasp at Kylo Ren and at _her_.

_Come to me,_ it said, in a voice sibilant and inviting. _I can give you so much._

Rey's revulsion was so strong that it broke whatever connection she'd made with Kylo Ren, and she stumbled back a step. In the holoprojection, Kylo Ren rocked backward, putting a hand out to stop himself from tumbling off the pallet. His eyes flew open and he turned straight to the camera, like he knew she was on the other side of it.

“I won't tell you this again,” he snapped. “I won't speak to anyone you send to me. I won't cooperate... unless it's _her_ you send to me.” His dark eyes cut right in to Rey as she watched, still breathing hard. “I won't speak to anyone but Rey.”

Leia cut the projection, and the room seemed to ease and open up. Rey drew in a long breath and let it out, and became aware that Finn had moved in close, looking at her in concern.

“You okay?”

“Yes—yes, I'm all right.” She smiled at him, but was grateful for the warmth of his closeness. 

“So you see why this is a little concerning.” Leia turned to face them, crossing her arms.

“Why Rey?” Poe asked. “What's his new obsession?”

“It's not exactly new, I think.” Luke rested his arms on the back of a chair and looked at her. “Thoughts, Rey? A feeling?”

She cast her mind back. The yawning void beckoned, but it was small and far away now and she pushed it aside as best she could, searching for some clue. “He wants me to join him,” she said slowly. “As his student, as Snoke's new apprentice.” When she hesitated, Luke made a subtle “go on” gesture with his gloved hand, encouraging her. “Maybe... he sees me as an equal? But that doesn't make sense.”

Luke and Leia exchanged glances. “It does, if you think about,” Luke said. “He blames Leia and myself for... well, most of his life choices. Snoke poisoned him against us when he was very young. You, though, you're one of the first people to really be on par with his abilities. You've proven yourself a challenge.”

Finn crossed his arms. “So he... what? Respects her? Doesn't track with what I know of the guy.”

Leia turned to Rey, her voice and eyes gentle. “We won't make you do this unless you want to, and affirm it unequivocally. No information is worth more than your life or your well-being.”

Rey drew in a breath and tried to steady herself but failed. Beside her, Finn reached out, his fingers brushing against the back of her hand, and Rey's mind filled with images – the sun on black curls, wisps of brown hair blown across freckled skin, warmth that rivaled the sun cupped in the palm of a hand. It was enough to help her say, “I need time to think on it, if that's possible.”

Luke reached out and touched her shoulder gently. “Of course. Go meditate, go for a hike, do something so you can be calm. Tell us when you're certain of your choice, whichever it may be.”

Rey let Poe step up and put his hand on her back, gently guiding her forward as Finn tugged her along, and the three of them (plus BB-8, tootling quietly at their heels) walked through the residential areas of the base to Rey's quarters. At the door, when she'd keyed in her code and unlocked it, Poe cleared his throat.

“No pressure, Rey,” he said, “But I get the sense – not a Jedi sense, just, uh, a normal one – that you're... really mixed up right now. So if you want me or Finn or both of us to stay I think we'd be okay with that. Right, buddy?”

“Right.”

“So, uh—“

“Please,” Rey whispered, and if she hadn't been feeling so much turmoil she'd have been annoyed at the plaintive tone of her voice. Now she could feel the darkness of what she'd touched in Kylo Ren's mind, and it made her feel so cold she thought her teeth would start chattering. “I don't want to be alone.”

“Then we'll be here as long as you need us,” Finn said. “C'mon.”

Rey changed in her 'fresher unit, listening to the two men rustling around in her quarters and muttering quietly to each other, and when she emerged in her sleep clothes she saw they'd pulled the back cushions off the couch and were collecting pillows and blankets.

“What,” she said.

“The bunk's too narrow,” Poe said with a shrug.

“So we improvised,” Finn finished, grinning at her uncertainly. “Come on, sit down, big shot Jedi.”

Poe settled on one side and Finn on the other, and after a moment Rey sat herself gingerly in between them, drawing her legs up and curling into herself as tightly as she could. The weight of the choice, and all its future implications, weight on her heart like a stone, and she hid her face between her knees and tried to breathe. When Finn put his arm around her she jumped, but relaxed and rested her head against his shoulder. On her other side, Poe shifted, one of his thighs pressed against hers and his arm along the top of Finn's, until she felt cocooned in warmth that cut through the chill of indecision.

“I don't know what this is,” Poe said, leaning his head back. His voice was soft. “But I like it.”

Finn's was a comforting vibration against her side and under her cheek. “Same here.”

Rey smiled and closed her eyes. This thing, whatever this was, calmed her mind and warmed her heart. The void had no power here.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her throat tight. “Thank you both.”

*

Snoke ground his teeth. He could sense Kylo Ren had awakened from whatever slumber he'd been in, that he was trying to reach for their connection, but neither of them were strong enough to fully pierce through. It was his bitch of a mother, naturally; she'd always been the biggest obstacle in the beginning, when he'd been planting the seeds of Kylo Ren inside Ben Solo's psyche. She was a nuisance, politically and in other ways.

The woman wasn't even _trained_ , he thought angrily. She'd deliberately passed up her chance to join her brother's powers, instead meddling about in politics as though she had still been relevant after the death of Palpatine, but something innate had the effect of blocking him, and so trying to communicate with Ben – with Kylo Ren – was like shouting through water. They could hear the noise, but they couldn't understand the words.

Kylo Ren would have to either become creative in his attempts at communication, or the First Order would have to find and retrieve him, and Snoke knew well that any such maneuver would be extremely costly. Kylo Ren was valuable, more than anyone thought, but Snoke had been far too pragmatic to invest in only one property. And in any case, if Kylo Ren was close to the girl now, why retrieve them both when he could just have her, this girl who was just as powerful and still new to her training, and less unstable?

General Hux came quickly when summoned, his hologram walking onto the low pedestal right on cue. Snoke had known his father of old, and though Hux and Kylo Ren had a rather contentious working relationship, the young man was far too valuable to let roam loose for some other power to snap up.

“Our search for the Resistance base where Kylo Ren is being held has not yet turned up more than a few leads, Supreme Leader,” Hux began, but Snoke silenced him with a raised finger.

“The Force has shown me,” he said, and ignored Hux's inability to hide a slight twist of his lip. “Kylo Ren is somewhere in the Raioballo sector. Narrow your search accordingly, and inform me immediately when the base is located.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.” Hux bowed and left, and Snoke sat back in his chair as the hologram faded.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thank you to Anne and to [NoRationalThoughtRequired](http://archiveofourown.org/users/NoRationalThoughtRequired/pseuds/NoRationalThoughtRequired) for being the betas and inspiration for this fic.
> 
> I do want to note that a) I haven't read _Bloodline_ (yet) and b) the bulk of this fic was written before its release. As such, I won't be altering the story to comply with its timeline, but it doesn't really come into play much. This is a fic about moving forward, not looking behind.
> 
> Enjoy!

Finn's internal alarm clock was still set for its usual dawn awakening, but it was with great unwillingness that he opened an eye to the world. Time had a weird way of slipping around in the cavern base, probably because there weren't any windows and the lights – usually set to mimic the night/day cycles of Dantooine – could be overridden in case the occupant of the room needed them.

The three of them had been up late into the night, talking about The Choice, Rey's choice. Which would really become the choice of all them, especially... well.

Finn looked down at the head of brown hair tucked against his chest. Rey had fallen asleep nestled against him, her hair falling in her face and shifting slightly with every breath. He stroked it back with his fingertips and she sighed, her fingers tightening in his shirt, but didn't wake up. Cupping her head with his hand, Finn looked over her to where Poe had draped himself across both of them, his head pillowed in the curve of Rey's back and one hand reaching up to rest on Finn's hip, fingers curled over the waist of his pants.

None of them had found words for whatever had grown between them. Finn, not having much experience with romantic relationships, had simply thought it was his own version of Rey's Choice, but then Rey (who had been leaning back against him at that point with her feet in Poe's lap) had wondered aloud why it was so frowned on for three people to share each other, and Poe had shrugged and said he'd heard of it but not really known if they'd be okay with it. Finn... Finn had just been glad that he wouldn't have to have the pain of putting one of them above the other. Both of them were family. Both of them were loved.

That was the word he'd decided on, privately. He'd heard that love came after, was supposed to be something that grew over time, but had never really understood why it couldn't just happen at the start. Either way, right now was the most content he had felt in a long, long time.

He closed his eyes and tried to get back to sleep, but Poe stirred awake not long after, flexing his fingers against Finn's skin in a way that made him shiver a little, and _that_ woke Rey up, and then they were all blinking owlishly at each other, trying to make sense of things.

“Huh,” Poe grunted. His curls were flat on one side, which made the other appear to be extra fluffy. “That happened.”

“Did you not want it?” Rey asked, and honestly, Finn could listen to her sleep-rough voice for the rest of his life. Poe grinned up at her and let his head fall to her hip, looking up at them both.

“Oh, I wanted it. Otherwise I wouldn't be here.”

Rey reached down and almost curiously let her fingers trace his stubble-covered jaw, and Finn smiled when Poe's eyes closed and he tilted his head so his cheek rested in her palm.

“How about you?” she asked, turning her eyes up to him, and Finn found himself struck dumb and also paralyzed at the same time. “Finn?”

In any other situation, a part of him knew, this would be where he kissed her, but all the holovids hadn't had a third person in the picture, and he didn't want to leave Poe out, so he ended up stammering the first thing that came to mind. “Uh. I mean, who wouldn't want to fall asleep with the two of you?” he said, feeling lame. “I liked it.”

Rey eyed him in that searching Jedi way of hers, but must have liked what she saw, because she seemed to radiate pleasure. “Good,” she told him, and settled back down. “Then if you two don't want to move, I'm not going to until I have to.”

Unfortunately that came way too quickly for any of them. Rey's comm chirped with a message that Luke wanted to see her for training purposes, and BB-8 powered up and informed Poe that he had several messages from other members of the squadrons wanting to know where he was, and Finn remembered he was going over tactics with some other officers in a few hours, and so they all dispersed. It was weird, both of them embracing Rey at the door, then Poe reached out and pulled him in close for a long moment when the paths to their quarters diverged. Finn felt Poe's breath tickling his skin and shivered again, and when he pulled back Poe seemed about to say something. Instead he gave Finn a little smile and stepped back, heading toward his quarters with BB-8 rolling at his heels.

Finn's own quarters seemed too large and empty when he got back to them, but he used the 'fresher and dressed in fresh clothes and was back with Rey and Poe for breakfast in the mess.

“Do you want us there when you go to talk to the General?” Finn asked. Rey, who had (unusually for her) only been prodding at her food, set her utensil down. 

“I think I can handle it,” she replied. “Master Luke will be there, we're going right after we finish training.”

“You call if you need us,” Poe told her. He made a motion like he wanted to take her hand, but stopped short, perhaps unsure of whether or not she'd be okay with it in mixed company. BB-8 trilled something, and Rey snorted, her conflicted expression giving way to a smile like sunshine.

“I'll call you if I need you, BB-8,” she said, reaching out to smooth her hand over the droid's domed head. “You won't be left out.”

BB-8 beeped in satisfaction, and trundled out after Poe when he left to go brief the squadrons on their assignments. With some trepidation Rey left too when Luke Skywalker appeared in the mess to collect her, and Finn was left pushing his food around his tray, wondering what he was supposed to do.

*

Luke was in his fifth decade, but neither that nor the years spent isolated on an island seemed to have hampered his ability to keep pace with her as they ran through one of the forested, hilly areas near the base. When she could, Rey stretched out in the Force to feel him drawing on it, using it to keep his muscles fresh and his mind focused. Once she thought she understood the way of it, she drew it into herself the same way, feeling it wash her muscles with warmth and leave strength behind.

“You're doing well,” Luke told her. He sounded like he was out for a stroll rather than running headlong down a game trail with a woman a third of his age. “You learn a lot faster than I ever did.”

“Good teacher.” Rey was not above panting – she felt how she felt, anyway, it wasn't anything to be ashamed of. She got a grin from her master, and when they reached a sun-drenched knoll overlooking a fold between two hills, he plopped himself down on the grass and gestured for her to do the same. 

Together, they drew in long, steady breaths, feeling the way the Force was created by the life around them, the way it flowed from tree to root to grass to animal to them, one small node on a great cycle. Rey smiled to feel it; on Jakku, before she had been awakened to her gift, she had been so alone. Now she would never be alone again.

The Force seemed to whisper its agreement to her. _Never alone,_ it said, as she touched the fluttery mind of a bird, then cast her awareness farther, toward the base. Some minds stood out like beacons to her, and Rey touched two of them, knowing them to be Finn and Poe. Finn burned a little brighter in the Force, but Poe was not that much dimmer, and Rey felt a rush of something she'd only entertained briefly as a young child, before such things had been stamped out of her by the harsh reality of scavenger life.

The third mind that stood out was not a beacon of light but seemed to her to be more like an eclipse, all its light hidden save a brilliant corona. This one responded to her mental presence, resolving itself – unfortunately – into the particular sense that she had associated with Kylo Ren.

_Rey._

_What are_ you _doing here?_ she wondered. While she'd made her choice, she wasn't about to let him know what it was; you didn't show all your best pieces to a trader straight off. _Go on back to brooding._

_I want you here._ Kylo Ren's mental voice sounded imperious, arrogant, and Rey stubbornly pushed his mind _down_ and _away_ , much preferring the brilliant lights of her... friends? Lovers? They didn't try to order her about, anyway. She felt Kylo Ren's surprise at her rejection out of hand, though, and then his mind latched to hers and pulled back. _Listen to me!_

_I_ won't!

_Stupid scavenger_ , she heard, _I'm your better by far and you will—_

Rey snorted laughter at the sheer presumption of it all, and immediately felt so much disgust from him that she was flung out of their uneasy connection. She tried to keep her lips pressed together on her chuckling so she didn't disturb Luke, but opened her eyes to see he was watching her with amusement.

“I'd tell you that a distracted mind isn't really good for meditation, but I think you know that already.” He shifted, relaxing his posture as his brow wrinkled with worry lines. “I do have a question, though, if you want to answer it. That second connection you made—who was that?”

One moment before she opened her mouth, Rey realized it might sound a little odd to say she could talk to _Kylo Ren_ in her head, but something in her whispered that he ought to know. So she told him of both the short conversations she'd had, every word, every feeling.

“Is that... is this something all Jedi can do?” she asked, peering at him. “I've never done it with you.”

“I don't think so,” Luke said quietly. He seemed thoughtful, gloved hand stroking his beard as he stared out over the hills. “I have a similar kind of connection to Leia, but we're twins. I think we both always thought that it was just something Force-sensitive siblings had. I've learned about things like it in some of the holocrons I've been able to track down, but knowledge from the old Jedi is so fragmented, so much of it's destroyed... you could have stumbled onto something new or something that was fairly common among Jedi before, and I'd have no idea.” He shook his head. “I wish I had better advice for you, Rey, I really do. But I think this is something we're going to have to work out as it goes.”

“Did any of the holocrons say how to stop it? It's only that Kylo Ren has been fantastically annoying, and—why are you laughing?”

Luke had snorted into his hand and was clearly trying to keep quiet, but his eyes were twinkling. “He's always been a reflection of both his parents. That's all. Rey, if he says anything else to you, or if this... this void reaches for you again, tell me immediately.”

“What do you think the void is? It...” _Frightens? No, I'm not afraid of it, so much as..._ “...is repulsive.”

“I think it's Snoke. Or at least, something approximating what he really is, a creature twisted by prolonged use of the dark side.”

“It's inside Kylo Ren's _head._ ” Rey felt sick. No wonder the man was so unstable, with something like that sucking in all the light in him. “How do we get it out?”

“It's not something we can do from without. Kylo Ren has to want to get rid of it himself, and right now I'm just not sure he wants to.” Luke sighed, running his hands through blond hair shot with silver. “Now, those first connections you made were strong. They're people you're familiar with, aren't they?”

“Yes...” Rey tensed up, hoping he wouldn't ask _who_ , but Luke just eyed her a half-second before carrying on with a lesson about sensing the presence of others even when they were trying to hide or perhaps weren't Force-sensitive at all, or were under the influence of something that dampened their presence in the Force. It built off what she knew, and by the time they rose to make the run back, she was feeling a little weary despite only sitting in one place for the last two hours.

Luke cleared his throat. “Rey... about what Leia's put before you, you don't have to...”

“I want to,” she said, surprising herself with how firm she was. “I want to do this.”

Something, some unreadable expression passed across Luke's face. It might have been... pride?

“Then I trust you,” he said simply. “Let's head back.”

*

They'd offered to fit her with armorweave clothing, give her an armed escort, but Rey had refused. What use would it be? If Kylo Ren wanted to kill her he'd have done it already, instead of hunting her up one side of the galaxy and down the other. She'd face him as she was and without hesitation.

It had been a surprise to see Poe with the rest of those who'd crowded into the security room to monitor this first meeting. She'd thought perhaps he'd skip it, go out on a training exercise to be as far away as he could. But something in her chest eased to know that both Finn and Poe would be there; whatever was growing between them, it was stronger when they were together.

“I'm just here to see the tables turned on that skug,” he muttered when she told him how glad she was. “That'll do me better than talking to anyone.” He spread his hands when both Finn and Rey gave him a steady look. “What? It will!”

“They asked us to be your backup, but I convinced them that you probably didn't want it. But if you need us...” Finn's fingers slipped against her palm, and Rey's mind filled with warm sunshine and cool waves. “We've always got your back. We'll be the first ones in there.”

“I know.”

Then it was time to go, and Leia walked her part of the way down the corridor before ducking into a side room.

“Better not get too close,” she said. “Ben and I aren't on the best terms. Be strong, Rey, strong like I know you are. Don't let him get you too frustrated, either—I fear he's gotten his stubbornness from both his parents.” 

She squeezed Rey's arm, and left.

There were two guards outside Kylo Ren's door. Rey paused between them, chin up, shoulders back. “I'm ready.”

One of the guards turned and keyed in the code, and the door hissed open smoothly, and closed when she'd stepped through, and then she was alone with him. He'd been watching as she stepped through the door, but hadn't made a move to get out, and Rey had to wonder why. It wasn't like they had anything or anyone who could stop him, save maybe Leia or Luke or a bomb. Stars, they didn't even have anything that would really hinder his ability to touch the Force; if he hadn't wanted to be here he'd have just left.

_Maybe he thinks he doesn't have anywhere else to go,_ and as if she'd spoken the thought aloud Kylo Ren looked up sharply.

“Supreme Leader will welcome me back,” he snapped, and it was accompanied by a sudden tangle of emotions hitting her in the gut. She drew a breath, began to work them out with deft mental fingers. The confidence in his voice was just a front, but anyone could have seen that, she was sure; below it was anger at her presuming to ask such a question, which was another smokescreen. Below that...

“You don't really believe that.” Rey stared at him. “You're still afraid.”

“I'm not—“

“Don't lie. You _are_ afraid of, of what will happen if you return to Snoke a failure.”

She caught the tail end of something, some sudden memory rising to the front of his mind, a pain so sharp that it took her breath away again until a wall slammed down between them.

“ _Don't_ ,” Kylo Ren snarled.

“Like _you_ wouldn't if our roles were reversed again.” Rey wished she'd brought a chair to sit on – he was much taller than she was and it was hardly a position of power, her glaring up at him like this, but she hadn't wanted to provide him with something to turn into a Force-propelled projectile if he got testy. Either way, when he made a vague motion with his shoulders that she took to mean she wasn't wrong in her assertion, Rey nodded briskly. “As I thought. So, you said you wanted to talk to me.” She sat herself down on the floor and stared up at him, and much to her surprise, he folded his legs and sat opposite her. Still taller, but at least it was less obvious this way.

“Ask.”

“Your passcode. We recovered a large chunk of data from the comm servers the First Order kept on Belsavis, but the most interesting bits are protected. We want your code to access them.”

Despite that whatever connection they'd made had been shut, she still felt a sense of being probed... or maybe _sized up_ was better. At least that she knew how to deal with. Whatever he saw, Kylo Ren rocked back, lidding his eyes. “Give me your datapad,” he said. “I'll enter the code there. Use it as you see fit.”

Rey didn't make a move for the datapad on her hip. “Why are you cooperating?”

“I had a change of heart. I love the Resistance.” When Rey just stared at him unimpressed, Kylo Ren spread his hands. “Do you want my code or not?”

She drew in a breath, but when nothing spoke to her out of the darkness and told her not to do it, she slipped the datapad out of its case and handed it over, and watched as Kylo Ren tapped in a long series of letters and numbers. Their fingers brushed when she took it back, and Rey felt a rush of memory and emotion again, and none of it was good.

“Is there anything else, scavenger?”

Rey hardly knew what motivated her to do it, but as soon as the word was out of his mouth she was flinging displeasure at him in the Force, hoping he felt the full weight of it. “Yes,” she said through clenched teeth, suddenly angry. “Never call me _scavenger_ again.”

She stormed out of the room. It wasn't until she'd gotten back to security that she had calmed down and begun to wonder just what was _wrong_ with her, why she had been so _angry_. Pushing through the people beginning to spill out of the room, Rey handed the datapad over to General Leia, trying not to meet her gaze or Luke's. “I don't trust his cooperation,” she said quietly. “But here. Can I go?”

Leia studied her for a long moment, then nodded. “If Luke doesn't have anything else for you, I think you need a break.”

“I think so too.” Luke stepped close, so the clustered officers didn't have to hear. “I'd suggest trying to figure out why you reacted the way you did, though. If it's related to what you told me earlier, we may have to find some way to make sure this connection doesn't become more of a distraction.”

Rey nodded, still feeling ashamed, and pushed back out into the corridor. Poe and Finn were waiting for her, and both of them sprang forward when she emerged, orbiting her like moons.

“Are you okay?”

“Did he do something?”

“You were amazing—“

“—seen his _face_ , I thought he was gonna spit—“

“Let's go outside,” she said. What she really wanted to do was hole up in her old nest inside the walker and wait for this sandstorm to pass, but she knew that wasn't an option. “Get some privacy.”

Outside of the base, with BB-8 trundling along at their heels, Rey told the two men everything – including the off-putting sudden burst of anger she'd felt. 

“I can't explain it,” she said, dropping to sit in the grass on a hilltop overlooking the landing pad complex. “It was as though I was feeling someone else's emotions. I was feeling...” her brow furrowed, and her fingers dug in to the grass. “... _his_ emotions.”

Finn's hand froze where it had been inching across the grass toward hers. “Kylo Ren was in your head?”

Rey made a face. “Yes. I suppose. But it isn't like the last time, and it's more like... we're in each other's heads.”

“So you're doing to him what he did to you and I?” Poe was looking away, and Rey couldn't help it; she reached out, her fingertips brushing his cheek. What he was feeling didn't suit him at all, but her touch seemed to calm him a bit, and when Finn followed her lead, Poe relaxed the rest of the way.

“I don't think it's like that. I don't know, I don't know how this happened and neither does Master Luke.” Rey sighed and lay back on the grass, staring up into the sky. First Finn, then Poe lay down on either side of her, and she reached out to take both their hands, lacing their fingers together.

*

“Do you think we should let her continue?”

Luke ran his hands through his hair, then folded them under his chin. “One side of me says that she has to. She'd tell us if she didn't want to keep doing this. The other side of me...” he took a deep breath. “The side of me that's her father wants to protect her.”

Leia nudged over a mug of hot chocolate – even when her brother had disappeared she'd kept a stash in her desk drawer, an ongoing symbol of her hope that one day he'd come back, he'd learn that his mistakes could be rectified by action instead of inaction – and Luke took it. “What's between her and Ben?”

“I'm not sure. I think it's like what we have. I wish – Leia, I wish I had half the knowledge that the old Jedi had. I wish that the First Order hadn't destroyed so much after what happened with my students. I wish I'd been better with Ben. I...” his voice choked off, and he ducked his head.

“I know,” Leia murmured. “But we can only move forward. I need your help, Luke, I can't do this alone. I can't lose anyone else.” She took a deep breath, and after a moment her brother did the same, and when they were both calm she continued. “So how did Ben and Rey become linked like us?”

“I think it had something to do with when he captured her and interrogated her. The way Rey talked about what happened, it sounds like she turned his own probe back on him, and they're both so powerful and she was so inexperienced, and add their blood relationship to that... they left a little bit of each other behind, even after Ben broke off what he was doing. And without knowing, without doing anything to remove it, they've let it take root.”

“Is it going to hurt either one of them? Ours hasn't, but we aren't actively trying to kill each other...”

“I don't know.” Luke pulled out his own datapad, bringing up a screen of text. “I've been trying to find information about it since this morning. Our bond's unique – there weren't many sibling Jedi in the old order, but those who were and knew their siblings had the same thing we do. Rey and Ben... their bond was formed differently. There's some mention of members of a bond knowing what happens to the other, if they get hurt or killed, but it wasn't something that was written about.” Luke scowled. “The Jedi weren't really smart about attachments.”

“Neither are we, if we're going to be honest about it.” Leia sighed. “So for now, we just... make sure they're safe. I won't put Rey in danger, but I won't stop her if she wants to continue with Ben. Maybe... well.”

“You hope it'll help him.”

“I do. If nothing else, this family's proved that we can do impossibly brave things to help our own.”

*

“General.”

Hux turned, striding down the catwalk of the _Finalizer_ 's bridge. One of the signal intelligence officers was twisting in her seat, looking up at him. “What is it?”

“A coded signal, sir.” The officer's fingers flew over the keys of her workstation, her green eyes narrowed slightly. “An embedded call for aid, activated via passcode.”

“Kylo Ren.”

“It's one of his codes, sir.” The woman looked up at him. “It'll take me some time to triangulate and verify, but I'll have a system and planet for you within half an hour.”

“Do it.” Hux turned on his heel and strode for the secure comm station to contact the Supreme Leader.

*

Sitting alone in his room, Kylo Ren reached out once again.

_Supreme Leader,_ he thought desperately. _Please, answer me._

As he had every time previous, he only reached a wall. Snoke was on the other side of it, he could tell, but something – some _one_ , maybe – was blocking him. Perhaps it was the growing ball of light in the back of his mind, the one that, whenever he'd probed it, had filled him with a sense of peace so profound he'd had to turn his mind away in shame. He'd spent half his life (more than that, really) trying to run from it, and now it had taken up residence inside him.

His attempt to contact Snoke unsuccessful once more, Kylo Ren turned his mind now to that ball of light, pushing tendrils of will at it. He was greeted by a warmth washing over him, a gentle calming pulse. _What could it hurt,_ a tiny voice whispered, and so he reached out, opened the door just a bit to let some of that light in to places where it hadn't been for years.

_Grass tickling his arms_

Ren's lips parted, the sensation so real and so glorious he couldn't help but open himself to a little more. He could almost smell the richness of the life around him.

_Fingers rubbing the back of his hand, and the grass on his cheek as he turned to see a pair of warm, dark eyes looking back at him and he was content, so peaceful and calm, the noise in his head completely silent for the first time in as long as he could remember—_

His eyes flew open, and Kylo Ren had to put his head in his hands and take in deep breaths until the light had subsided back into its little ball. But somehow he had the sense that its penumbra reached farther out now, that it had grown once more in his moment of weakness.

_Forgive me, Grandfather,_ he thought, even as he craved the peace he had touched.

*

Unseen, the man in the long robes watched Kylo Ren – the one he would always know as Ben – and felt nothing but pain for him.

_I never wanted this for you,_ he thought sadly, but the darkness kept him from reaching out and _fixing it_.

Another voice echoed out of the ether. _Hurts, doesn't it?_

_More than before._ The man in the robes cast one last lingering look over the hunched figure on the pallet before he turned away. There was other work to be done.

*

When she'd finished her triangulation and transmitted the coordinates to Hux's datapad and Navigation, the intelligence officer put her headset down on her console.

“Gotta use the 'fresher,” she told her partner. “Back in five.”

Striding through the corridor toward the main rec area for bridge crew, she ducked off into the first private 'fresher unit she saw. The hallways were full of cameras, from the tiniest alcove to the hangar bays, but even the First Order couldn't get them inside the 'freshers. Some things, it seemed, were still sacred.

Loosening the collar of her jacket, she pulled on a thin silver chain around her neck. A ring hung on it, silver set with green stones. It caught the light and sparkled, and her fingers brushed it almost tenderly before she used a nail to push on one of the stones. The ring began to glow, tiny filaments uncurling from around the metal band.

Cupping the tiny transmitter in her palm, the officer began to speak.

*

The next morning, Rey was awoken by an insistent buzzing at her door that turned out to be a very apologetic-looking aide.

“I'm sorry to disturb you, ma'am,” the aide said, not realizing that Rey's look of confusion was more due to being called _ma'am_ than being roused out of bed, “But they want you in Command.”

She dressed slowly, still groggy. Sleep had not come easy last night; every time she'd turned over to reach for someone she thought was there she'd found her bunk empty, no comforting, warm, solid companions to chase the darkness out of her dreams. When she got to Command, she saw that neither Poe nor Finn looked better than she did, but she felt a little better when Poe bumped her shoulder, and Finn stood a bit closer than he needed to, and as odd as it was for her, Rey accepted the strength their presence gave her... along with the biscuits and fruit they had stashed in pockets for her.

“We've received a message from a source inside the First Order,” General Organa told them. “This source has given us reliable information before, and based on our own long-range reconnaissance, we must accept this message as true.”

She gestured to one of the techs, and the holoproj in the center of the room lit up. There wasn't an image, just audio, a distorted voice speaking quickly.

“ _First Order has position of Dantooine base. Mustering fleet in Abregado system under personal command of Hux. Cease all access of stolen data with Ren code. Evac ASAP recommended. End of transmission._ ”

The General leaned on the table after the message had played twice. “We'll be evacuating starting in one hour,” she said. “Non-essential personnel and materiel first, rendezvous point on Ryloth so we can regroup and redistribute among any ships we can get in. If you're not there within one standard day of the first transport leaving this base then you'll have to make your own way.”

Admiral Statura took over. “I've already sent out members of Red Squadron asking for any and all support vessels,” he said. “But as you all know, without the Republic's assistance we're extremely limited on resources. So what ships we do have will be making several trips transporting whatever we cannot leave behind. Whatever we can't take with us, we'll store in one of the side caverns for later retrieval.”

“Dameron, you and Blue Squadron will be on patrol. Rotating shifts, I don't want anyone out there the whole time. That includes yourself.” General Organa gave Poe such a quelling look that he shifted in place. “Unfortunately I'll need you all here until the last transport is away.”

“Understood, General.”

“Rey...” The General sighed. “I can't let you leave right away, either. We cannot risk Kylo Ren returning back to the First Order, but neither should we prioritize him over our own people. I want you to take him personally to Ryloth when all others are gone. Chewbacca's suggested that you take the _Falcon_ , though he'll be using it for transport until then.”

Trepidation rose in her mind, but Rey tilted her chin up and voiced her agreement. There wasn't anyone else to do it, and she wouldn't let herself be cowed. The General studied her for a moment before her gaze shifted to Finn.

“I'm not volunteering you for anything,” she told him, not unkindly. “We've asked a lot of you, and I want to make sure you and your knowledge are safe with us. You're welcome to leave with the first transport—“

“No,” Finn interrupted, then looked a bit sheepish for doing so. “Sorry, General. But no, I want to stay with Rey and Poe. I can help out the ground crews with the X-Wings, and Rey... if you need someone else to help you with Kylo Ren, it would honestly be a pleasure to be the one telling him what to do.”

There were some subdued snickers around the table, and General Organa shook her head. “You've all become bad influences on one another,” she muttered, but she was smiling. “Very well. You all remember your drills – get to work. First transport in an hour, remember.”

Rey and Finn were set to work packing crates and moving them where they needed to go - red-tagged materiel went out to the landing pads for immediate loading and evac, green-tagged went into the side cavern. Luke appeared and suggested to Rey that she might fine-tune her control of the Force by practicing levitating and moving crates, and she had to admit that seeing Finn's eyes bug out a little every time she did gave her a jolt of pleasure. Poe drifted by more than was probably strictly necessary, too, always looking at her out of the corner of his eyes.

More than that, it seemed to help energize the people around her. The General would come out and speak with them sometimes and they'd always come away smiling, but seeing Rey doing something that was (to her) as mundane as the rest of her training seemed to be a point of wonder.

“Nobody's seen a Jedi in almost two decades,” Luke said, when they had taken a break to get food before the mess was fully broken down on the second round of transports. “Even in the old Republic, before the Empire, there weren't ever many Jedi. Now, until we can find and train others, it's just the two of us. It helps to remind people that we aren't myths.”

The day became a blur after that. Rey reached the point of exhaustion and pushed through it, drawing the Force into her to keep her moving, keep lifting crates into ships with the same determination that had always fueled her on Jakku. Only the familiar high whine of TIE fighters brought her out of it. She turned, staring up into the sky as the Dantooine plains briefly gave way to the loamy forest of Takodana.

*

From the bridge of the _Finalizer_ , General Hux watched as trios of TIE fighters swooped around the Resistance transports, their turbolasers flashing light across the blackness of space. He wasn't really concerned about the transports, though; his mission lay on the planet down below.

“Have you been able to locate the Resistance base?” he asked, looking over at one of the junior officers.

“We've determined the launch point of the transports. It's in the foothills of one of the major mountain chains. Shall I target it for aerial bombardment, sir?”

“No.” Hux considered the tiny blinking point of light on the map. “Send the good Captain down with a company of troopers and instruct them to locate Kylo Ren.”

“At once, sir.”

Hux's lips pressed together. Despite his annoyance with the general level of property damages incurred whenever he was on board, Hux had almost come to miss Ren's constant posturing; with him back on board, things would begin to feel normal again.

*

Poe looped around the transport, firing at the TIEs harrying it. Two of them exploded immediately, the debris sliding sideways where it hit the transport's shields. The third gave him a bit more of a chase before he shot it down too.

“Great shot!” Testor said over the comms. “You planning to leave some for the rest—woah!”

He saw Jess cut to the side abruptly as two troop carriers slipped out of the bay of the _Finalizer_ and dropped planetside. “I'm goin' after them!” she yelled, giving chase before TIEs swarmed her, causing her to have to peel off.

“Black Leader to base,” Poe said into his comm. “Hope everyone's packed, General. You've got ground troops coming your way.”

*

“There's the _Falcon_ ,” Finn said, watching the freighter land away from the main landing pads so it wouldn't be in the way of the transports. A lot of them were starting to whine, their engines making noises that vibrated Rey's skull. More had come in over the hours, but not enough, not _close_ to enough, and now the First Order was here and shooting up the place. She skittered around debris still burning from where a TIE had blasted one of the piles of crates and grabbed Finn's arm.

“We've got to leave!” she yelled over the deafening sound of another pass by the fighters. “Go tell General Organa – I've got to go get _him._ ”

“You need backup—“

“I can do this!”

Finn bit his lip, but nodded, his hands coming up to grasp at her shoulders almost reflexively. “Comm if you need me,” he told her, and then he was jogging off down the corridor to Command, and Rey ran through eerily empty hallways until she reached Kylo Ren's room. The medical staff and their equipment had all been evacuated earlier on, and she was alone as she keyed in the door code.

“You're coming with me,” she said. Seated on his pallet, Kylo Ren didn't move.

“I think I'll wait here.”

“I think you won't.”

Kylo Ren, petulant child that he was, crossed his arms. But the action was accompanied by a wave of Force that almost, _almost_ pushed her back. Rey would not be moved, though.

“Either you come with me,” she snapped, “Or I carry you.”

“You're too small—“

“Do you _really_ think that's going to stop me?” Rey took a breath, controlled her emotions, and unhooked the binders from her belt. “So.”

Ren eyed her, but unfolded his arms and stuck them out so she could fasten the binders on his wrists, trying not to touch his hands at all. Whenever their skin brushed, she got flashes of thought, memory, and she was beginning to have the horrible suspicion that whatever this was between them was not going to go away. 

Kylo Ren seemed to be tense, too, but he simply made a rolling motion with his shoulders once she was done. “Lead the way.”

The caverns shook as the barrage continued from above, and more than once she had to grab Ren to keep him from falling over since he couldn't catch himself with his hands. They both flinched away from the contact every time.

Her earpiece crackled after a particularly awful tremor. “Troop ships landed half a klick away,” Finn said. He sounded breathless, and Rey's heart stopped when she heard the distinct stutter of blaster fire in the background when he spoke next. “You'd better hurry if you want to get off this planet in one piece!”

They emerged into chaos. Most of the crates remaining on the landing pads had been demolished, and those left were being used as cover for firefights between stormtroopers and the Resistance. X-Wings swooped low, firing on the TIEs attacking the remaining transports trying to get off the ground. As she watched, Rey saw the distinct black-and-orange streak of Poe's fighter overhead before a series of turbolaser blasts appeared, making a clear path for them between the base entrance and the _Falcon_. 

“Go!” she heard in her ear, and didn't need further encouragement. Grabbing Ren's arm, she hauled him bodily across the field, working against the growing tug in his mind and his constant pulling away, trying to get to the stormtroopers they passed. She heard shouts of _Lord Ren!_ and _Hold your fire, hold your fire, don't hit him_ and shoved him ahead of her once Finn joined them, tossing her pack to her.

“That thing weighs a ton, what have you _got_ in there?”

“My things!” Blaster fire made her duck, pushing the two men behind her. Her lightsaber flew into her palm from her belt and she deflected the bolts, the blue blade flashing through the air. Ren, though, struggled against her grip.

“They're here for me, let me go, I've got to get back to Snoke—“

“Not gonna happen!” Finn said, jabbing his blaster rifle into Ren's side. To Rey, he said, “We can't get into a fight, Phasma's here and she's _relentless._ We've gotta go!”

“Right!” Rey shut down her saber and pushed Ren ahead of her again. “We're leaving _now_.”

Infuriatingly, Kylo Ren balked at the foot of the _Falcon's_ ramp. “I am _not_ getting on this _ship_ ,” he snarled, and Rey was struck by a wave of _angerguiltfearsadness_ so strong she stumbled back a step. A blaster bolt struck the hull just above her head.

“We don't have the _time_ for this,” she hissed. “Get on the kriffing ship!”

“I won't!” Ren tore out of her grip, and Rey could see the glint of the dying sunlight on chrome armor as Phasma broke from her cover. Kylo Ren was making a beeline and Rey, Rey couldn't have any of it.

“You _will!_ ” She reached out in the Force, wrapping Ren with it and with her will, and _pulled_ him back. His feet actually skidded against the ground, but his surprise spiked as she bodily slammed into him, using her entire body weight to propel them both back onto the ramp. She felt the air leave his lungs in a great whoosh as she flung out an arm, using the Force to push the ramp controls.

“We're on board!” she yelled in the direction of the cockpit. “Go! _Go!_ ”

Chewbacca's answering roar echoed down the corridor, and Rey climbed off Kylo Ren and dragged him off the ramp as the _Falcon's_ engines roared, boosting them into the sky. The ship rocked under fire, but she heard the answering _thud-thud_ of the quad cannon and knew Finn was keeping them covered.

“What,” wheezed Kylo Ren, rolling onto his side, “Is _wrong_ with you, scavenger?”

Rey lunged back, slapping a hand over his mouth. “I told you, never again,” she snapped, and took her hand away. “Besides, you're the _numpty_ who nearly got us both _killed_ because you think you'll be welcomed back.”

“The Supreme Leader is the only one who will—“

“Oh, shut _up,_ you don't believe that.”

For some reason – a reason she didn't want to explore right now because doing so might get him to open his mouth again – Kylo Ren did stop talking, but by then Rey was moving again, pulling him to his feet and along the corridor and shoving him into one of the passenger seats in the cockpit. “Finn,” she called, “When you're done, come up here and make sure Kylo Ren doesn't cause trouble.” Chewie rumbled something, and Rey snorted, dropping herself into the pilot's seat. “I need a copilot,” she told him. “You're the best.”

She took the controls as they broke atmo, Finn still firing the quad cannon but slowing as they wove through a battle that was rapidly dying out as Resistance ships were either jumping away or – rarely – being destroyed. Off to port she saw Poe's ship peel off from where it had been shadowing two Aethersprites, dropping into flank position behind the _Falcon._

Ren was a silent, brooding presence at the back of her mind, but Rey was completely absorbed by the intricate dance the Aethersprites were performing now, shooting down TIEs as they went. When Finn fell into his seat, blaster pointed at Kylo Ren, he was just as enthralled. “Who are they?”

Poe's voice came over the comm. “That's Luke Skywalker,” he said. And, more reverently: “He’s with the General.”

The two ships weaved and dove, each one's movements complimenting the other. One banked, and the other rose to fire in its place. In the Force, there was a strong and warm light connecting the two pilots, such that Rey could barely tell the difference between the two of them. It was as though they were one individual.

“The General can _fly_ ,” Poe said, obviously awestruck. “She gave me coordinates, uh, for our first hyperspace jump. They'll be flying with us, we're the last ones out. Transmitting to you now.”

“Received,” Rey said, after the computer chirped at her. “Calculations check out. Ready to go to lightspeed.”

“On my mark,” Poe said, and she felt her master and the General reach out in the Force, and touching their minds linked as they were filled her chest with light. Together – she knew they were doing this together – Rey reached for the hyperdrive lever and pulled it back, and the stars streaked into lines as they made the jump.

*

He watched the decrepit freighter flicker away into hyperspace, and felt very, very cold. Not only was he unused to failure, but he was unused to having to deliver news of said failure to the Supreme Leader, and rather feared the consequences of it.

_I’ll have to do with all the consoles for a while longer yet, it seems,_ he thought. _And Ren will just have to wait for his rescue._

“I want all data from this encounter transmitted to my datapad within ten minutes,” he announced. “And I want a secure comm channel to the Supreme Leader so I can inform him of our status.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you to my betas for being endlessly patient and, in Anne's case, helping me out with the story so that it made more sense. 
> 
> Come see me on [my tumblr](teslatricity.tumblr.com) if you want to chat!

“Congratulations,” Kylo Ren said, when they'd confirmed the other three ships were present with them in hyperspace. “You've made this ship more reliably functional than Han Solo ever could.”

Both Finn and Rey rounded on him but Chewbacca got there first, howling his rage as he grabbed the front of Ren's shirt and lifted him out of his seat, slamming him against the bulkhead opposite the cockpit door. He howled something that made Rey blanch, but Kylo Ren struggled against the Wookiee's grip, his face contorted. 

“I don't _care_!” he snarled. “He failed me! You _all_ failed me! Supreme Leader is the only one who _hasn't!_ ”

Chewie growled his response, but Rey heard the note of heartbreak in his tone. Something flickered across Kylo Ren's mind, and a voice whispered _push_ in the back of her consciousness.

“If that's true then why are you still with us?”

Ren's eyes flicked to her, and that kernel of doubt in the back of her mind began to grow. Chewbacca let him down, and he pushed the hairy arm away, stalking toward the back of the ship. Finn started after him, but Rey reached out, curling her hand around his arm.

“I think he needs to be alone right now. There aren't many places for him to go, anyway.”

“I’ll still feel better if I keep an eye on him. The last thing we want is for him to sabotage this ship.”

Finn went off to shadow Ren, wherever he’d gone off to, and Rey was left with Chewbacca. She reached out, putting a hand as far up the Wookiee’s shoulder as she could reach. “I’m sorry he said that to you.”

_Don’t take responsibility for his words, little Jedi,_ Chewbacca replied. _They aren’t yours._

“But I’m the reason he’s here. If I hadn’t…”

_One thing I know of Jedi… when they have such feelings as yours, those feelings are usually right._ Chewbacca made a sort of purring-trill noise and sat back in the copilot’s seat. _We should do a systems check. We’re going to be putting stress on the hyperdrive with all these jumps._

While they were doing that, Rey commed over to Poe’s X-Wing, smiling when she heard him say they were okay – an assertion backed up by cheery warbling from BB-8. “You’ll teach me some of those tricks?” she asked, and thought about the way his stubbly cheek had felt under her fingertips.

“ _They weren’t tricks! They were tactical maneuvers!_ ” But Poe laughed, and Rey smiled a little more. “ _I’ll teach you, Rey. Promise._ ”

“I won’t let you forget.” Next she checked in on the General and Luke, and couldn’t keep an awestruck tone out of her voice.

“I’m not a hotshot like your Poe, but I’m not _terrible_.” The General’s voice was full of her smile, and Luke laughed with the both of them.

“You’re just out of practice.”

“Maybe if certain Jedi Masters stepped up and took on more of the responsibilities around here…”

“I’m fulfilling my responsibilities by training Rey!”

“And what _else_ do you have going on?”

Her spirits lifted, Rey finished up the systems check and leaned back, watching the cloudiness of hyperspace pass them by. “Are you all right up here on your own?” she asked Chewie.

_I think I can manage. Go be with your mate._

“My mate—Finn?”

_A blind Jawa could see it. I will handle our jumps, little Jedi._

Rey found Finn – and Kylo Ren – in the communal cabin. Ren was staring at the bunk as though he’d never seen one before and pointedly ignoring Finn. She thought she caught him glance up at her when she walked in, but Rey ignored him, too, and made a beeline for her friend instead.

“We’ve got a few more jumps before we reach Ryloth,” she said. “But everything checks out. Chewbacca said I should go be with my mate.”

Ren made a funny little choking noise in the back of his throat, and they both looked up at him for a moment. He remained silent otherwise, though, and besides, she was distracted by the way Finn looked at her almost shyly.

“Mate?”

“He’s not wrong.”

Ren made another noise, and this time Rey looked up at him. She’d felt a spike of… something in the place she was unfortunately beginning to associate with him in the back of her mind. “Should I get the medkit?” she asked him sweetly.

“I’m not _ill._ ” He went down on his haunches, fingers brushing over one of the bulkhead walls. “I may be if you two continue this foolishness, but I am not right now.”

Finn rolled his eyes, and Rey grinned, reaching out to lace their fingers. When she touched him she could feel what he was feeling more clearly, and it was all light and happiness and hope. Experimentally, Rey stretched out with her senses, pretending they were fingers she could use to brush against his cheek and wind around his mind with her own feelings of happiness, and Finn’s eyes widened. 

“I _felt_ that,” he said.

“So did I,” Ren added. “Your ability to shield yourself is _deplorable_ , you ought to have taken me up on my offer.”

His fingers pressed one of the panels and it sprung open. Finn was back on alert instantly, moving across the cabin in a fluid movement to press the blaster rifle against the back of Ren’s head. “Back off,” he instructed. Ren rocked back, glaring up at him, and Rey got up to investigate.

“What is this?” she asked, reaching into the little cubby the panel had hidden. Inside were… toys, dusty old things, an old holoprojector and an assortment of datadisks. His expression didn’t change when she pulled out a few of them, but she felt a stirring in the back of her mind, a sense of very deep discomfort, surprise that there was anything left accompanied by thoughts of _he didn’t have the decency to get rid of them, what difference did it make, he still abandoned me just like the Supreme Leader said—_

_Enough,_ Rey thought angrily, and the mental stream cut off like a door slamming shut. Ren stood and straightened, his expression haughty.

“Relics from someone Han Solo stole this ship from, obviously,” he muttered, stepping back away from the cubby. “I heard something rattling around in the wall.”

“You’re lying,” Finn and Rey chorused.

“It doesn’t matter.” Ren moved across the room then, sitting on a crate against the wall, and refused to say anything more. But she could sense his unease as she sat down for a game of dejarik with Finn, and after it had grown to distracting levels she reached out, trying to soothe his mind of its turmoil. He jerked upright and stared at her, eyes wide.

_Why should he be surprised I would want to calm his thoughts?_ she wondered. And, on the heels of that, _And he says that I’m the one who thinks too loud._ Still, he seemed to relax a bit after that, and his mental presence subsided to a more manageable hum.

They made three more hyperspace jumps after dropping out the first time until they finally emerged into the space above Ryloth. It was crowded with ships, and as soon as the four of them began vectoring in the comm lit up with a demand for identification. Back in the pilot’s seat, Rey transmitted their identification and grabbed the headset, listening to General Organa as she spoke to traffic control.

“We’re cleared,” she said at last, when they’d gotten their approach vector. “Ryloth has always been sympathetic to the Resistance – one of the first Rebellion leaders was a Twi’lek – but they’re worried that harboring us will lead to the First Order showing up here and shooting us up again. They’re being extra careful… but follow me in, and we should be fine.”

General Organa’s Aethersprite took the lead, with Luke right on her flank. Poe dropped back to flank the _Falcon_ , and Rey felt both the apprehension and the sharp focus in his mind. She hoped he could feel her encouragement as she took the controls and guided them down through atmo, landing the _Falcon_ deftly under a rock overhang.

A team of infantry were waiting when Rey marched Kylo Ren down the ramp, and escorted both of them to a secure prefab module backed against a cliff face. When she released his binders, Ren simply turned from her and lay down on the pallet and pretended to sleep, so Rey went off to find where she was quartered. The base was still being constructed, though – even prefab units needed time to set up – and when she ran into Finn and Poe they agreed that temporary bunking on the _Falcon_ would be the best idea.

“More space,” she said.

“More privacy,” Poe added.

“More _quiet,_ ” Finn agreed.

Before sleep, though, the three of them were pressed into service. Rey was asked to check over some of the ships that had been stressed by the constant ferrying between Dantooine and Ryloth. Whenever she got a break she caught glimpses of Finn helping carry wounded into the medical tents from ships that had just arrived, putting his medical skills to good use. Poe was back in his X-Wing as soon as it was refueled, running patrol for the system. She barely saw Luke or the General at all, and it wasn’t until they’d ticked over into the next day on Ryloth that she was able to crawl onto the camping pallet she’d set up on the floor of the communal area of the _Falcon._

Finn was the next one in. He barely shucked off his boots and the patched, worn jacket he loved so dearly before he was crawling in beside her, yawning so widely she could see his back teeth.

“Almost all the ships made it,” he told her. “We only lost two. I helped the doctor out as much as I could with triage and the minor stuff, but she sent me off after I nearly fell asleep standing up.”

“Good.” Rey edged closer, holding her breath as she slipped her feet in between his. They always got cold now, and she hated sleeping with socks on. Finn just sighed and reached out, draping an arm across her.

They’d apparently both dropped off by the time Poe came in, looking haggard. “System’s clear for now,” he muttered, nudging his pallet closer but rolling onto Finn’s anyway. “S’it okay if I… Finn?”

“Hm? Yeah, go ahead.” Rey cracked an eye open to see Poe wrapping an arm around Finn’s chest, tightening it. She didn’t need the Force to know what he was feeling, and reached up to slip her fingers in the spaces Poe’s left. He caught them, pressing their linked hands against Finn’s chest above his heart.

“Glad you’re both safe,” she whispered, and hoped that her words conveyed all she felt.

*

Kylo Ren slept alone in his cell, and as he slept, he dreamed.

Part of him knew that he ought to have stayed awake, skimming the minds of those around him for ones susceptible to Force-assisted compulsions. But unease had been growing in him, and he had only had more time to contemplate it. So instead of gathering information and escaping, he had let himself succumb, and now he was paying the price.

His dreams had almost always been dark, terrifying things. As a child he’d woken up screaming more than once, half-remembered visions of ships in space and faces he didn’t know. When he’d gotten a bit older, the dreams had morphed into the modulated voice of a dark man, of his grandfather. Vader had spoken words of power to him, words of encouragement… and later, when his cousin had come, words of rage and death.

A part of him wondered why Vader, who had to his knowledge never met the Supreme Leader, still spoke his ideology. A part of him knew why, and refused to acknowledge it.

But now on his pallet, his dreams were hazy. Instead of darkness there was light, golden light, and instead of slights he saw his mother cradling a baby – him – in her arms, smiling radiantly. He saw his uncle teaching him how to use the Force to play tricks on his parents, all of them laughing. He saw his father showing him the secret cubby near the bunk and helping him fill it with his treasures—

Ren ground his teeth, and in his dream tried to fight these images back, but they would not be denied. They were there to remind him of the part of him that would ever be a failure to his grandfather.

_No, Ben, you stupid boy. You’re no failure._

Ren’s eyes flew open. The voice echoing in his mind was so familiar, and the words had been said so very gently that his eyes stung with tears. Ashamed, he wiped them away with the back of his hand and stared at the roof of his cell, already light.

_Who are you?_ he thought, but there was no answer.

*

Finn woke unwillingly. It only felt like a few moments after he’d fallen back asleep with Poe already snoring into his back, though a glance at the chrono display on the nearest console informed him it was well into morning already. He still felt as though he could have slept a lot longer, and as nobody was yet banging on the _Falcon_ ’s hull or trying to buzz their comms, he started to fall back asleep again. Then Rey whimpered, and Finn was completely awake.

She was still curled up facing him; her hand and Poe’s had fallen apart at some point in the night but her fingers still brushed Finn’s chest, and now they clenched into a fist. Finn caught it, covering her hand in his own. Every line in her body was tense, her face scrunched up. An instant later his mind filled with darkness, and Finn understood why.

He couldn’t see all the details, and part of him didn’t want to; as much as he relished sharing things like this with Rey, her thoughts were her own until she chose to share them. But he could tell that she was terrified of what she was dreaming, and so he pulled her in close, tucking her head under his chin and trying to soothe her trembling. 

She made an awful mewling sound in the back of her throat and suddenly Finn’s mind was full of a dark, rain-soaked night, lit only by the glow of fires. All around him were strange humps on the ground. Then he realized those humps were bodies, and felt sick to his stomach. Why would Rey be dreaming about this?

He was moving across the muddy ground, his boots squelching in the mud. There was another glow lighting his way, a red glow, and when he stopped he saw it was a familiar lightsaber clasped in his hand. There was a little child in front of him, a young girl with her hair plastered to her head and terror in her eyes.

“Please!” she cried, reaching out to him, she knew him, she had trusted him, and he raised his lightsaber. At that her cries subsided into silent fear, but her eyes stared accusingly at him until he used the Force to lift her and fling her against a rock. She lay still at the base, and he closed down his lightsaber.

_It’s done,_ he thought. _The spare is dead. There is only me now._ Oddly, the thought brought him no joy, no surge of power; if anything, he felt diminished. She ought not have paid the price for her father’s failings, she could have been useful, but it had not been what was ordered. He could follow orders, and he would.

_Good,_ a sibilant voice replied. _Now come to me, Kylo, Master of the Knights of Ren._

Rey woke with a scream. Finn was jolted out of the vision, and behind him, Poe shuddered awake, instantly alert.

“What’s going on, what’s happening, is there an attack—“

“No, no, it’s Rey—“ Finn looked up as Rey tore out of his arms, stumbling for her boots and a jacket – his jacket, but it was really more like their jacket – and half-running around the bend in the corridor. Before Finn could disentangle himself from the blanket he heard the hiss of the ramp lowering, and the crunch of Rey’s footsteps as she ran after whatever she chased.

Poe stared at where she’d gone, then at Finn, and as one they pulled on shoes and followed her.

*

Rey ran breathlessly through the half-constructed base. Personnel who were on Nights or who hadn’t yet found their beds jumped out of her way and she flew past them, tears blurring her vision. She had never regretted opening herself to the Force once since touching the saber that first time, but now she did, now she regretted whatever she’d done that let _him_ in, she regretted leaving Jakku even though it had brought her the happiness that was laying with Finn and Poe, she regretted _everything._

She had the presence of mind to slap the controls for the door, but as soon as it had opened enough she was barreling in, reaching out with both hands to shove Kylo Ren off his pallet and onto the hard utility carpeting that the secure module had come with. 

“I don’t want this!” she shouted at him. “I don’t _want_ your horrors in my head! I don’t want to see you killing children, killing Jedi, killing your own _family_ for whatever sick satisfaction—“

He’d been knocked off-kilter by her sudden appearance, but Ren was back on his feet now, dark eyes narrowed and his own rage crackling around him in a corona. “Do you think I want your thoughts any more than you want mine?” he snarled. “I don’t understand how a desert rat like you, a _nobody_ , an _orphan_ , can have so much power, I don’t want you to have it over me, I’ve worked too hard to get what I have and it was already starting to crumble and I _don’t need your help_ for it—“

“—think I _want_ to dream about all the things you’ve done, I have enough darkness without _you_ —“

“—and you think I got _enjoyment_ out of it, you have no _idea_ , I did it because they wouldn’t listen and they didn’t _care_ and they acted like I was _nothing_ when I’m the only one left, the only _true_ heir, I killed the other and do you think that was _easy_ or that it _helped_ because you’re _wrong_ and I’m going to lose everything I have because of your _meddling_ —“

Other people burst in then, the General and Finn and Luke and Poe and the guards and between all of them they pulled Rey and Kylo Ren apart. Luke gripped her firmly around the shoulders, putting his whole body in between them, and Leia and Finn each took one of Ren’s arms and dragged him until his back hit the far wall of the module. 

“Breathe, Rey,” Luke said soothingly, and she felt a warm wave of calm wash over her. “Breathe through it, feel it and then let it go, you have to let it go, you have to let everything go.”

She drew in a hoarse breath and realized that the few items of furniture were rattling ominously, and that the walls of the module appeared… scraped, scratched, as though pummeled by wind-driven debris. Across the module she could see Kylo Ren’s eyes were blown huge, his chest heaving, and suddenly he slumped and she did too, all the fight gone out of her. The furniture stilled, the heavy crackling energy that had filled the module dissipated. Like Ren, all she felt was raw and empty, but when she reached out with a silent mental apology Ren shied away from the touch, and that somehow made her feel worse. She leaned onto Luke’s shoulder and shook like a leaf trying not to cry, and Luke held her close and stroked her wild hair until the fit had passed.

“Does one of you want to tell me what the _kriffing skrogging hell_ that was all about?” the General snapped. “Both of you projecting loudly enough Snoke himself surely heard all of it, fighting like a couple of _children_. Rey, I thought you knew better.”

“I had a dream,” she mumbled around a very mucous-filled throat, and felt miserable. 

“A dream,” the General repeated. She turned her gaze to Kylo Ren now, who surprisingly looked rather uncomfortable. “What’s _your_ story?”

“I had a dream,” he echoed. The General threw up her hands, and Rey caught Ren suddenly looking oddly at her and Luke, his brows furrowed in thought.

“I know you always hounded me about developing my abilities, Luke, but now I can appreciate letting them develop as they will. Luke, talk to your—your student, calm her down. I can’t have this happening again. Ben—don’t look at me like that, I won’t call you the other thing—if you’re interfering somehow with her mind—“

“I’m _not_ ,” he snapped. “We’re _linked_ and if I could break it I would, believe me. I don’t want her _happiness_ , her _contentment_ , when I—“

“Do not finish,” Leia told him, her voice icy. “Luke, is there something to be done to temporarily block them?”

“If I knew it, I’d have done it.” Luke took Rey’s shoulders. “For now, I’m just going to make sure Rey has better control. That in itself may help.” The two of them shared a look, something that only they understood. “Come on,” he said to her, and they left the module. A few moments later Finn and Poe trailed after them, and Rey felt even worse knowing they probably couldn’t understand what was going on or why she’d torn out of the _Falcon_ so suddenly. She stopped and reached out for them, and Luke let them tug her over.

“I think you all need to go back to sleep, if you can,” he said gently. She felt nothing but worry from him and from the other two, steady and strong against her back. “I’ll make sure you aren’t disturbed. Rey, when you’re ready, come find me.”

She nodded, and Luke reached out again with a calming brush of his mind. “I’m not angry,” he told her. “You aren’t in trouble. But I want to understand what happened. When you’re ready.”

“All right.”

Luke gave Poe and Finn a very measuring look. “Take care of her, both of you,” he said, and made for his own bed. Finn put an arm around her waist, and Poe put an arm around her shoulders, and together the three of them walked back to the _Falcon_. Poe went to the galley to make them all something hot to drink, and Finn kept his arm around her after they sat. Poe joined them and leaned on Finn’s shoulder, handing Rey her drink.

“Hot chocolate,” he said. “But I’ve improved it. S’how we make it on Yavin IV.”

Rey took a sip and felt the added spices tingle on her tongue. It was good and warmed her to the core, and she gave Poe a grateful look over the rim of her mug. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Probably not,” Poe agreed. “You worried us.”

“What was that?” Finn asked. “What you were dreaming. I saw it. In my head.”

Rey gave him a quizzical look. “How?”

“If I knew how I wouldn’t be asking. But it…” he shuddered, and Poe wrapped an arm around both of them and held them tightly, his curls brushing her throat.

“We’ll talk in the morning,” he said, his voice muffled against them. “Finish your drinks and let’s get back to sleep.”

When they finally dimmed the lights and curled up together again, Rey lay awake for a long time with Poe pressed against her back and Finn holding her as though she’d run off again. She didn’t know how to tell them that the dream had awakened a memory within her, one buried deep down in the dark space before Jakku.

She remembered the crackling hum of a red lightsaber, and she remembered the silver-and-black mask, slicked with rain.

*

When the others had cleared out of the room, Leia turned to face her son. He was white as a sheet, his pupils dilated. Whatever had happened had unsettled him so much she could actually feel him as she hadn’t in such a long time. Carefully, not wanting to risk him drawing back into himself, she brushed against the edges of his mind. He flinched – in the Force and physically, shivering away from the touch like it would burn him. At first, at least. Then he seemed to accept it warily.

“What happened?” she asked, in a voice much more calm.

His eyes flicked to her, and her heart ached; Ben looked so much like a trapped animal and every instinct in her made her want to gather him up like she had when he was little. But he wasn’t so little anymore, and she could barely reconcile this man who was all angles and shadows with the gangly boy she’d foolishly sent off.

_If only,_ her mind echoed, but she shoved it away.

“I told you,” Ben said. “I had a dream.” 

“It must have been quite a dream. Do you want to tell me about it?”

She’d asked the same thing, with the same inflection, when he’d been younger. The memory must have stuck with him, because Ben tilted his head, confused. “You actually _want_ to know?”

“Of course I do,” Leia replied, the words tumbling out before she could think to stop herself. “I’m your mother, I’m worried about you.”

For some reason this seemed to surprise him, and that made her ache even more, and she remained still as he prodded at this concern she showed him, disbelieving, mistrusting it as though certain it was some trickery she was going to use against him. But she was surprised in turn when he seemed to resolve whatever internal debate had been going on in his mind, nodding to himself.

“I dreamed… I dreamed about home. Chandrila.”

“ _Home_ home.” Leia thought she would regret this, but she gestured to the floor and they both sat. Ben very carefully did not touch her, but he was close enough to if he wanted. “What else?”

“About you, and Luke Skywalker,” and he seemed to be making a deliberate effort to separate himself from his own family. “And…”

“Your father?”

“Yes,” and Ben’s voice was pensive, his gaze faraway as though remembering something from another lifetime. She supposed that in a way he was, and let him get on with it. “About the cubby.”

“Where you stashed everything you didn’t want me to find,” Leia murmured, her lips twitching, “Because you thought I didn’t know about it.”

Ben’s mouth almost moved, and Leia wondered what a smile would look like on him as he ran a hand through his hair. There was something brewing in his mind, a question, but she waited for him to form it and get it out on his own time. She wouldn’t be so impatient again.

“Did he really want me to go?” Ben asked. “Did he really hate what I was?”

Leia took the rage that was her first instinct ( _how dare Snoke say that, how dare he fill my son’s mind with these lies, how dare he_ ) and squashed it deep down. She would be angry later, when her son wasn’t around to feel its force. “Han loved you,” she said. “He… somehow he knew what I didn’t understand until it was too late, that you were better when you were with us. I convinced him that sending you to train with Luke was what was best, that it’d help you, but I was wrong, and Han…” she trailed off, holding Ben’s eyes. _Han paid for it,_ she thought. _He gave more than he should ever have had to give._

Ben seemed to be having trouble breathing, and his long fingers were clenching his knees so tightly that the knuckles were white. “Then _why didn’t he come get me?_ ” he asked. The blanket behind him on the bed rustled, and strands of her hair stirred on a wind of Force. “Why did he let me become just another one of Luke Skywalker’s students when I’m _more_ than that, I’m Vader’s _heir_ , the only one left…”

With difficulty of her own, Leia remained silent and let him talk himself out. She had the idea that pushing back against him now would just make him break, or worse, push him back the way he’d come, and it seemed she was so close to her son again that she refused to risk it. She waited while Ben swallowed, his eyes darting anywhere else in the module until at last they settled back on her.

“I thought he didn’t want me,” he said, his voice cracking. “I thought neither of you did. And even Luke, Uncle Luke, when I got there, he had the other students, he…”

Ben took a shuddering breath and with it he seemed to close in on himself. But not like before, Leia thought. Now where she had only felt a consuming darkness, there was a glimmer of light.

“I need to go back to sleep,” he said, voice flat again. Leia climbed to her feet and waited until he’d lain back down on his pallet before she left the module.

The base was still on Nights as she walked back to her own sleeping quarters, and she was glad for it. There were fewer people to try and hide her rage from, fewer people who could not know she would have taken a ship and flown across the galaxy until she found Snoke and ripped his head off his shoulders with her bare hands would it not have been even more foolish than getting in the middle of a Force-fueled argument between two very unhappy people.

As soon as she shut the door, Leia considered the sparse, still-unpacked things in the room for a moment. Then she clenched her fists, and everything flew outward, hitting the walls and crashing down. 

Something brushed her mind, and she turned suddenly. That had felt… familiar. Like someone she’d known long, long ago, like the brush of fingers through her hair.

_It’ll be all right,_ she heard.

“Who’s there?” she asked, but there was no answer.

*

Across the void, Snoke slammed his fist onto the arm of his throne. Kylo Ren had vanished from his mindtouch.

“Get me General Hux,” he snarled at the comms officer who answered his call. “Our timetable is escalating.”

Hux appeared with alacrity. Following his failure at Dantooine, Snoke had found it necessary to make his displeasure known, and Hux had reacted with predictable upset. Snoke had known his father of old, and Brendol Hux had not been one to tolerate failure in his progeny. Though he appeared rather more pale than usual, Hux stood straight-backed and ready before him as Snoke relayed his request.

“Do not fail me again, General,” he said. “Or I will be extremely displeased.”

“I will not, Supreme Leader.”

“For your sake, I hope so.” Hux’s hologram dissolved into static, and Snoke sat back, running a withered hand across his jaw. The longer Kylo Ren was away, the more likely it was that all the hard work Snoke had done to put him on the edge he walked would be unraveled. Ren was a blunt instrument, but a valuable one, and Snoke had invested far too much in the boy to let it all go to waste.

*

A soft chirrup woke her up from a deep and dreamless slumber, and as awareness crept back in Rey became aware that Finn had shifted her head into his lap and was sitting up, and he and Poe were both quietly talking above her head. Poe was still pressed against her back, but he’d propped his head up now. 

She didn’t want to open her eyes; her brain felt bruised, and Finn was stroking her hair back from her face with slow rhythmic movements, and it was more comfortable to lay here bracketed by them than wake up and face the events of the night.

“…the General we’ll be a while longer, okay, BB-8?”

She heard the droid toot an affirmative and then roll off, and felt Poe lay back down, his thumb stroking her hip where her shirt had ridden up. “How long do you think she’ll sleep?”

Finn was quiet a moment, his fingers resting atop her head, and then she felt a surge of amusement from him. “Ask her yourself, she’s pretending.”

Rey cracked an eye open. “How did you know?”

“Your breathing changed. I’m a trained observer, I noticed.”

“Well, I don’t want to be awake, so pretend you didn’t notice it.”

“Sadly, that’s not how it works.” Finn resumed his stroking. “I think we need to talk.”

Rey tensed up, guilt rising like bile in her throat, and both men pressed in close. “We’re just worried about you,” Poe said, his breath ruffling the hair on the back of her head. “Finn and I were talking before you woke up. He said you dreamed something awful, and when we found you with Ren, with the whole mod shaking…”

She could sense his fear, the places his mind went when he thought about how he’d experienced the Force being used before, and turned so she could take his face in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t understand it any more than anyone else does. If I could break this… _link_ that I have with Ren I’d do it, just to keep you two from having to experience that again. It was terrifying enough for me, but for the two of you…”

She pressed her forehead to Poe’s. “I’m not mad or anything,” Poe said, his hands coming up to cover hers. “I’m not going to leave you. I just want to know you’re okay.”

“I don’t think any Jedi is ever _really_ okay.” Rey let the warmth of his touch and the solid stability of Finn at her back calm her, though, until she could reach out to the Force and use it to help soothe the ruffled waters of her own mind. They held her through it, until she drew a breath and nodded.

“Better?” Finn asked. His voice was pitched low, and she turned to look up. He was very close, and she worked one of her hands free so she could cup his cheek.

“Better,” she agreed, and then he was kissing her, and beautiful light burst in her chest, not just from within her but also from Finn and from Poe, and when Finn broke away it was only so Poe could take his place, his palm cupping the side of her head, and a little laugh burst out of her, joyful and unrestrained, when she pulled away so Finn could pull the pilot over, and she thought, _what a lovely view._

“Now that that’s settled,” Poe said, licking his lips when they’d all settled back a bit more flushed than before, “Can you tell us what exactly happened? And more importantly, how we can help keep it from happening again? Because I don’t know about Finn, but I don’t want to see you that upset.”

By the time they’d finished it was almost midday, and BB-8 had rolled back in with a polite but firm request from the General that they get themselves up and do something useful. Rey felt a bit sleepy still, but she supposed that was in large part due to how comfortable she was, and rolled out of bed after only a little bit of grumbling. They all dressed, stealing little touches where they could. It felt good to touch and be touched, to know that she had people supporting her. In turn, she’d promised to be honest with them as much as possible, and not to go haring off without first making sure they knew what was happening. The whole thing gave her a sense of incredible _rightness_ , like something in the universe had finally clicked into place, and that was all she needed.

She bid the men goodbye at the entrance to a much-expanded warren of prefab mods and temporary shelters, and found Luke in his own set of living modules. They were bare-bones now, but BB-8 had told them on the way that the First Order hadn’t gotten into the cavern the green-tagged crates were in and so the General was sending small strike teams back to Dantooine to get them, a few at a time. Luke had never had much and neither had she, so she sat on the utility carpeting without complaint when he gestured for her to join him in meditation. The chance to truly center herself and let the Force flow into and through her without interruption washed away all the remaining rawness of the night before, and when she opened her eyes at Luke’s mental cue, she felt quite herself again.

“You’re much better,” Luke said, smiling. “I’m glad. I was worried, you were so _angry_ , and there was… something in your mind.”

“I think this link, whatever it is, it’s giving me Kylo Ren’s nightmares. How can I stop it? I don’t want to do that again, I don’t like how it felt.”

“I can’t imagine anyone who would.”

They spent another few hours working through the shielding techniques she already knew, building on them so she could put them up more effectively between herself and the place where the tight, dark ball of _Kylo Ren_ rested in her mind. He’d drawn back in on himself overnight, and while she was glad for it, she also felt a little sorry. It seemed he’d been unwinding himself.

Luke must have had an idea of her train of thought, because he folded his hands inside his sleeves. “It’s not your responsibility to be some kind of counselor for Kylo Ren – that’s something he’ll have to find on his own if he wants it – but I don’t think it’s wrong to say that having you in his mind has been a step in the right direction. He’s been following the wrong path for so long, though, that it’ll take time for him to work out what the right way for him is.”

“Wouldn’t it just be turning away from Snoke?”

“That’s part of it. But Snoke is almost more insidious than the Emperor was, because what he says makes sense if you don’t pay close enough attention. He’s dangerous because he works and works away at you until all you’ve got is what he offers.”

Rey thought back on her nightmare, on how young she had felt – on how young _he_ had felt. She remembered the loneliness, and a little more of her anger at him faded away. “It’s sad,” she murmured.

“Yes, it is,” Luke agreed. “Don’t forget that, Rey. Compassion is central to what a Jedi _is_ to other beings in the galaxy, and remembering it will serve you well.”

*

He hadn’t been able to settle after that, pacing his tiny cell, trying to reach out to Snoke, to push through the smokescreen in his mind. That damnable light was growing, and now he knew it to be Rey without a doubt. As her presence grew in his mind, the smokescreen thickened.

_Help me,_ he thought, reaching out along the well-worn path that had always meant Snoke, stability. _Why didn’t you ensure my return? Why didn’t you find me?_

The idea that, perhaps, Snoke didn’t _want_ him back had occurred to him, and though he’d initially rejected it out of hand, doubt had wormed its way in, and with it the very nasty thought that maybe he had been wrong all along. But surely Snoke, who had given him support and had faith in him when his own family had sent him away, abandoned him, would be different than that. He had raised Kylo Ren up and given him power and authority and status befitting someone of Vader’s line.

As he sat in his cell meditating, trying all that he could think of to pass through this barrier that kept him from all that he knew, he felt the light in the back of his mind flare up suddenly. It grew and grew until it _burned_ , it hurt, it was too beautiful and pure—

Agonized, Kylo Ren hunched over, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Stop,” he muttered, “Stop it, stop it, _stop it!_ ”

The light faded slowly but remained in the back of his mind, and something inside him snapped. He didn’t have his lightsaber, but his hands and his ability to use the Force were enough for him to destroy what little there was in his cell. When he was left standing in a pile of what had once been the furniture, chest heaving, he only felt worse than before. The rage had once given him focus, like some kind of prism for the darkness in him. Now it just left him exhausted.

His uncle came by later, surveying the debris with an irritating calm. “Did it make you feel better?” he asked. Ren glared at him and turned his back, hoping he’d go away if ignored ( _what kind of fool would ignore you, how could it be someone from your very own family, your blood_ he remembered hearing once), but he knew his uncle better than that. Luke swept his boot across a section of floor across from Ren and sat.

“I want to talk to you about what’s going on with you and Rey.”

“Believe me, Skywalker, I didn’t ask for it. I don’t want her in my head any more than she wants me in hers.” He didn’t say that it ached to have someone so good, so full of light and life constantly making her presence known regardless of the strength of his blocks, that there was a part of him that craved attention from her no matter how he got it. “I’ve been in there, anyway.”

“As Rey’s been in yours. It wasn’t a pleasant experience for her.”

Ren thought of his early days with Snoke, with the Knights of Ren, and he thought of the feeling of having his thoughts taken out of his head and played with and analyzed as he lay immobilized and helpless ( _what good is it to you if you don’t experience it yourself as well_ ), and replied, “What do I care?”

“I’m not here to tell you how to feel. I made that mistake once already.” The regret in his uncle’s voice seemed to be sincere, interestingly enough; he hadn’t thought that the mighty Luke Skywalker could understand such a thing. “I just want to make sure that whatever kind of emotional feedback loop happened this morning doesn’t happen again. It isn’t good for Rey, and it’s not good for you.”

The concern seemed to be sincere too, as Rey’s had been on the trip here, and a voice spoke up in his mind. _Didn’t Snoke tell you that nobody cared how you felt?_ it asked. _What’s going on here, then?_

That thought made him feel ill. If that little voice was right, if this concern from his family and others _was_ sincere, then it meant Snoke had been wrong, and if _that_ was so then what else had Snoke been wrong about? It was a line of thought he couldn’t handle at the moment, still raw and ragged. _Get him out, make him leave, don’t let him keep poisoning your mind._

“You care a lot about her.”

“She’s my student, of course I do.”

“ _I_ was your student, and you were never this concerned about my well-being. Not even after I told you what I’d been dreaming.” Ren leaned forward, hoping his face was as calm a mask as he wanted. “So what is she, really?”

Ah, there it was, a little mental eddy in the current of his uncle’s mind. Luke remained calm on the outside, but he could sense that there was unease growing deep down. “It’s as I said. I’m her master, she’s my student. Nothing more.”

“I think you’re lying. I think she’s much more than that.”

Luke rose then, and there was a crack in his expression, and the eddy had grown to full on swiftwater rapids. “I’ll ask your mother if she wants you moved to somewhere else for now,” he said, and left.

Despite the small sense of triumph he felt, other thoughts began crowding into his mind as soon as he was alone. The little girl he’d thought dead, the thoughts he’d pushed away of his cousin climbing up on his shoulders saying _You’re tall, I can see everything!_ because it hadn’t fit in with what his grandfather had been whispering to him, it hadn’t helped him on the way to power…

The light in the back of his mind pulsed merrily, and he cradled his head in his hands. It was like he stood on sand that was slowly draining away, and he couldn’t see anywhere to go.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, big thanks to my betas for making this readable. And to reiterate, I haven't read _Bloodline_ yet and this fic was largely written before it even came out, so nothing is compliant with that. 
> 
> If you want to chat or be friends or whatever, come talk to me over on [my tumblr](teslatricity.tumblr.com)!

Finn waited outside the General’s office, feeling more than somewhat anxious. While he knew it was different, he couldn’t help but compare this to being called into Captain Phasma’s division office, and the consequences of those visits had left indelible marks on his memory.

At last the General’s aide gestured him in. He’d been in Leia’s office before, and while the sentiment of being called before one’s commanding officer was the same, the similarities between her and Phasma could be counted on the fingers of one human hand. Phasma’s division had been neat, almost sterile in its orderliness, a physical representation of her ideals. Leia’s office was a maelstrom of datapads, flimsiplasts, half-unpacked crates. While the crews had been ferrying green-tagged materiel back from Dantooine for the last few days, they’d given the most attention to anything containing equipment and material that would help overall operations versus any crates of personal items, but somehow even without any personal touches, the office seemed to exude a more comforting air.

“Finn,” the General said, gesturing to one of the molded plastic chairs across from her. “Come in, sit down. How are you?”

“Fine, sir.” He sat gingerly; sitting while in the presence of a standing superior, even one who was only standing to reach into a crate just above her head, was also something he hadn’t gotten used to in the time he’d been with the Resistance.

“Just Leia. Oh, for the love of—“ she made an exasperated noise, and Finn felt an odd ripple against his skin as a particular datadisk rose up out of the crate and floated right into Leia’s palm. “The extent of my official Jedi training,” she said, waggling the disk at him. “My brother’s been after me to refine what I do a little more. I think he needs more distractions, myself… I’ve gotten by five decades without balancing a pile of rocks, I think I’m doing fine.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Didn’t I just say to call me Leia?”

“Sorry, s—uh. Leia.”

“Better. We’ll work on that, stars know you’ve earned the right…” she set the disk down on top of a slippery pile of other ones and folded her hands on top of her desk. “Dr. Kalonia tells me you’ve been very helpful over the last few days. Helping with triage when we got here, treating minor injuries, assisting with the more complicated procedures. She’s very grateful – medical always needs more hands during times like these. And I know you’ve distinguished yourself in our ground operations as well. You know details of First Order operations, training… we’ve been able to counter a lot more than we could have before, especially now that the Republic’s in a rebuilding phase after the loss of the Hosnian system. We owe you a lot.”

“I’m just trying to do what’s right. There’s nothing you owe me for that.”

“Well, you deserve a little recognition for what you’ve given us, I think, and since I’m in charge here, others have to listen to me.” Leia smiled at him. “So I’m going to ask that you start coming with me when I visit leaders who have contacted me about supporting the Resistance. Kind of like an executive aide, but also sort of an apprentice.”

“What? Why?” Finn snapped his mouth shut as soon as he realized what it sounded like. “I’m sorry, General, Leia, I didn’t mean—“

“That’s all right. It’s a big request, and when you eventually make these trips on your own – and I have every confidence that you’ll pick up diplomatic ability just as quickly as you’ve picked up everything else – it’ll be a lot of responsibility. I wouldn’t offer it to you if I didn’t think you could excel at it.”

“I don’t… I don’t know what to say.”

“Just take some time and think about it. I want you to find a home here, Finn, and I think others would respond to someone who’s been brave enough to break away from the First Order like you have. You’re honest and forthright, and while diplomacy can be a game of lies, there are beings out there who respond far better to someone like you.” Leia smiled at him. “As I said, I think you’d excel at it. And it seems like you’d have your very own Jedi escort _and_ an ace pilot for security. You’d be safer than I am most of the time.” Finn felt his cheeks warm, and Leia’s grin widened. “You three aren’t exactly subtle sometimes. Rey’s at least gotten better at blocking others from feeling what she’s feeling, but you and Poe… you burn bright.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be. I’m glad for the three of you – love, as I’ve learned, is one of the most powerful forces in the galaxy. A little of it can accomplish a great deal.”

Finn didn’t know quite what to say to that, so he just nodded. “Is there anything else, Ge—Leia?”

“No, that’ll be all for now. Come find me when you’ve made your decision, all right?”

Finn wandered around for a bit after that, lost in thought. Poe was out flying patrol again, and Rey was off with Luke doing some Jedi thing, so he went to go help Dr. Kalonia out with some of the more severely injured, checking bandages and vitals and doing his best to cheer up the ones who were conscious. It made him feel a bit better too, helping people.

Rey found him later on, sitting in the newly-erected mess and pushing something reconstituted and unidentifiable around his tray. She sat close enough for their knees to press together, but otherwise kept her distance, and in return Finn slid his feet forward against hers, a secretive kind of hug that made her look up and smile a little. She’d been quieter the last few days, thoughtful, but not unhappy. 

Poe joined them not long after, and then they were surrounded by a cloud of pilots, and it wasn’t until they were getting ready to crawl into bed in Finn’s module that he got a chance to tell them what the General had offered him.

“But that’s wonderful, Finn,” Rey said, and her smile alone would have convinced him to take the offer. “And I think General Organa has a point, others can see that it’s possible to break away from the First Order and be all right.”

“It’s a great opportunity,” Poe agreed, with an accompanying whistle from BB-8, who was rocking back and forth in its charging station. “Who knows, maybe we’ll be able to find more troopers who think like you.”

“I don’t know about that,” Finn said, stepping into his sleeping pants and squeezing onto the narrow bunk with the other two. He’d had the idea to ask for a sleeping module sized for two, but with the way Poe slept, he wasn’t sure even that would be enough room. “The conditioning is pretty thorough. I’m still not sure how I was able to break it, and believe me, it’s something I’ve put a lot of thought into.”

Rey seemed to go quiet again, curled up with her back pressed against his chest, and when Poe had dropped into an exhausted sleep she turned in his arms.

“What was the conditioning like?”

The question made his breath hitch. Honestly, Finn had done his level best not to think too much about what life with the First Order had been like. Even when it had been easier for him to follow orders, there had always been a small _something_ in him that had told him that something was wrong, that he ought to go back for Slip, that he should never leave a comrade behind. The voice had just grown louder over time, and when they’d shot up that village on Jakku, it had finally shattered the glass between him and the reality of what he’d been trained to do.

Rey must have sensed his unease because she reached for him, cupping his face in her hands. “I'm sorry, you don’t have to tell me,” she said. “It was a strange question. I just… wonder…”

He thought about a red glow in the darkness, and took her hands in his. “I was taken from a young age and raised with only one goal,” he said. “Kylo Ren became what he is by choice. I don’t think we should be compared.”

“I’m not—that’s not quite it. I mean, I don’t think he went through the same things you did. But I think if you can throw off what you were taught, so can he.”

Finn wanted to tell her she was wasting her time. He’d seen Ren stalking the corridors of ships, the rock-walled halls of Starkiller, and he’d remembered thinking there was nothing in that man worth saving. He remembered the searing pain of a lightsaber across his back that burned so hot it made the world go dark, and wanted so badly to tell her to stop whatever it was she was thinking, that she must have been wrong on Belsavis, that the Force was just tricking her.

_Have faith,_ that small voice told him. _Trust her._

“I just don’t want to see him hurt you again,” Finn said, pulling her in the rest of the way and cradling her against his chest. “I don’t want to see you have nightmares like that. It… it hurt.”

He felt her fingers trace the scar tissue as far down as she could reach. “I don’t want him to hurt you again, either. But I must have done all this for a reason. I just wish I could know for certain what it was.”

Finn stroked her hair until she was still and quiet, almost asleep, her hands curled loosely against his chest. “I think if anyone could do it, it’d be you,” he told her at last.

That made her huff soft laughter. “I’ve got a lot to learn,” she mumbled sleepily. “But thank you, Finn.”

After that she did drop off, still comfortably tucked against him. Finn stayed awake for a long time, his mind swirling with a thousand questions, before he joined the other two in sleep.

*

“He knows.”

Leia looked up from her datapad at where her brother sat on the small couch in her office, nursing a cup of hot chocolate. Lando, bless his ribald soul, had made a stop on Ryloth with great ceremony, and presented Luke with a supply of his favorite drink. Luke had been burning through the stuff at an alarming rate, and had they not been unwilling to block each other out of their bond that would have been a sure enough clue that something was on his mind. At last she was going to get to the bottom of it, she thought, and he’d stop skulking around.

“You’ll have to elaborate, Luke. Who knows what, exactly?”

“Kylo Ren. Ben. He knows who Rey is.”

_That_ made her stop scrolling through a supply report and give him her full attention. “Are you sure? How could he know?”

“The other night, when they…” he made a vague gesture in the air. “I think Rey saw… that night. _The_ night.”

Leia rocked back as if struck. She remembered that night, too, as clear as if it had just happened yesterday. She doubted she’d ever forget feeling her son so suddenly _present_ in her mind when he’d spent the last few years blocking himself off from her and Luke, drawing inward, his eyes growing ever more haunted and ever more angry. What little she’d been able to sense from him until that night had been dark, but it was nothing compared to the torrent of emotion she’d gotten. At first, before she’d known what was happening, she’d been glad – all she’d wanted was her son back – but when the reality had set in, she’d stumbled into the ‘fresher and retched all through it.

She remembered seeing the bloody scene through the eyes of her son, and thoughts of _he’s a boy, he’s just a boy, how could I let this happen, how could I have failed so badly_ had flown through her head one on top of the next. She remembered him becoming aware of her and deliberately showing her what he was doing, cutting down the young and the old alike. She remembered catching a glimpse of his reflection in a mirror that had been shattered by the fighting and seeing a crazy kaleidoscope of images, a black-and-silver mask and robes singed and frayed by the fighting, nothing of her son remaining for her.

As soon as she’d had control of herself she’d ordered a Republic strike team out to the moon Luke had chosen to train his new Jedi on and hoped that what she’d experienced hadn’t been real. But as she’d watched the feed from one of the strike team members’ body holo, seen the corpses strewn about and the fires still burning, she’d known that the cold that had settled in her gut wasn’t a sick joke, that her son was lost.

It had only gotten worse from there; her niece hidden on Jakku when the Knights of Ren started hunting anyone with Force ability, her brother depressed, guilt-ridden, her husband adrift. Luke's wife had left, disgusted with his lack of desire to take action, and then Han had left too, unwilling to go around again assigning blame, and then Luke had disappeared, and Leia was left to deal with the shattered remains of her life alone.

She’d been angry then. Now she was just tired.

“Has she said anything to you?”

“No. But she’s been withdrawn.”

“You know I think you should have been honest with her from the beginning.” Leia stared at a holoprojector she hadn’t brought herself to activate in years. “Families shouldn't keep secrets from each other. It's only gotten ours into trouble.”

“I know, I know, I just... I abandoned her, Leia. My own daughter, left like I was left on Tatooine.”

“But no Ben Kenobi to watch over her this time.”

“And it came back to bite me _hard._ ” Luke's shoulder hunched a little more. “What do I do?”

“ _Tell_ her, you numpty. Otherwise it'll eat you up inside, and Rey's smart enough to pick up on it and start to wonder.”

Luke smiled a little. “She gets it from her mother. I'm still that idiot farmboy fresh from the Outer Rim.”

“In a lot of ways? Yes.” Leia got up and sat next to him though. Disapprove of his choices or not, he was her brother. “Go talk to her, Luke. You've got enough regrets, don't let this be one of them.”

“What do I _say?_ How do I begin to explain? I'm not like you, Leia, I never knew what to say.”

“It’s not hard, Luke. Just tell her the truth, you're good at that.”

“What if the truth is the hardest thing about all this?” Luke grumbled, but she felt a change in him when he rose. Leia watched him beadily.

“If you don’t tell her soon, she’s going to work it out on her own. They’re connected, Luke, and no amount of shielding can stop the flow of thought between them. If Ben knows, even if he just suspects, she’s going to pick up on it sooner or later, and then she really _will_ be mad at you. Let her hear it from you first.”

Her brother swallowed, but she felt in him a growing resolve, and hope. He’d been so long without it – they both had. Maybe this was the beginning of healing for all of them.

*

_Have you had any more success?_

He turned away from where his grandson tossed on a pallet, his dreams troubled. _Whatever Snoke did, he was extremely thorough. It’s frustrating, Master._

Ben made a noise, and his fingers curled into the sheet, and Anakin wished that the hand he extended could actually touch. But he was able to reach out in the Force and draw off the edge, and had to content himself with that.

_One thing you were never able to grasp until the end, Anakin, is—_

_Nothing’s set in stone. And if I could be saved…_

_Ben is not beyond hope. Keep trying, my friend._

Anakin turned now; passing through the base to where his niece bent over a piece of machinery at a workbench, her fingers (and face) smeared with grease, her brow furrowed in concentration. Affection surged through him at seeing her.

Her own mind was astir, and he reached out and soothed her a bit too, gave her clarity. _Your road isn’t easy either,_ he thought sadly. _You’re still paying for my mistakes._

_Bit late for regrets like that, isn’t it?_ Ben came up beside him, studying Rey. _At least she’s got enough of her mother and grandmother in her to be less hotheaded than you ever were._

_Thanks._ A swirl of thought caught his attention, and Anakin reached out to pull it to the front of her mind. In the living world, Rey set her tools down and ran a hand over her hair.

_It has to be both of you together,_ he thought. _It has to be balanced._

To Rey, he whispered, “Ask.”

She spun in her seat, her eyes wide as she stared right through the two ghosts. Then, slowly, she rose, one destination in her mind.

_Let’s hope this works,_ Obi-Wan thought. _Everything hinges on Rey._

Anakin watched her go. _I believe in her._

*

Rey wasn’t sure what had made her do it. Perhaps some subconscious summons, a pull like two magnets, perhaps the will of the Force – it had plopped Kylo Ren down in their midst after all – but she found herself outside the locked door of his small suite without realizing that her feet had taken her there.

He’d been moved, and Rey thought it had something to do with the surge of emotion she’d felt from him a few days ago. It had caught her in the gut and left her gasping with its intensity. Since then he’d been a constant burr in her mind, waking her up at all hours with spikes of emotions that ran to all ends of the spectrum. She’d frankly had enough of it, but hadn’t wanted to go face him just yet. She could still remember _being_ him in her dream, looking down at herself as a girl, and a thousand questions still swirled around her mind. Did he know her, who her parents were?

With a nod to the guards on either side of the door, Rey thumbed in her passcode and the door hissed open.

He was sitting in the small living area, facing one of the transparisteel windows that looked out onto a dry wash. In the sunset the light hit the rocks and turned them a burning gold-orange, but she suspected that he wasn’t really seeing them. He was trying desperately to claw toward that void space in his mind again, concentrating so hard that his brows were drawn down and every muscle in his body stood out tense against the simple beige scrubs. 

Being so close now she felt the pull of the void herself, and blurted out, “Stop it!”

Ren’s shoulders twitched, but she felt him draw away from that awful place, and part of her relaxed. She’d no idea what would happen to _her_ if he ever managed to reach that place, but she didn’t want to find out.

“What do you want?”

“You’re being disruptive.”

“I can’t see how. They don’t exactly take me out on walks.”

“Don’t be stupid.” Rey stopped herself, though, remembering what Luke had said a few days earlier, and tried a different tack. “Something’s obviously on your mind. Since we’ve been stuck together for some reason, what bothers you bothers me.”

“I apologize for being such a _burden_ on you—“

“You know that isn’t what I meant. Are you ever going to be anything but deliberately obtuse?”

She went and sat across from him, forcing him to look at her. Whatever turmoil was in his mind, she could see it plainly on his face; dark circles, skin pale enough to be translucent. _You’ve brought this on yourself,_ she thought, but could not help feeling a bit sorry for how pathetic he looked. Funny that the creature in a mask she’d found so terrifying was now reduced to what sat before her, posturing to hide his… fear? Indecision? Both?

Ren was studying her carefully, his head tilted to the side. In the sunset his dark eyes looked even darker, black ringed by gold. For a split-second Rey saw herself as he saw her – hair ablaze and skin aglow, as though the light itself had crowned her for its own, and he was a small shadowed thing caught in her corona. Then the image was gone, and he was looking away, uncomfortable.

“You’ve got questions of your own,” he said. “I can sense them in your mind.”

“I’ve been asked to get more information about the First Order from you…”

“But you don’t care about that.”

“I do. They’ve nearly killed everyone I care about at least once, they’ll continue to do so until they’re gone.” She hesitated, though, the carefully thought-out questions giving way to other things. _You knew me, you knew who I was before Jakku, who are you, who are you to me, who am I?_

“The nightmare,” she said, and saw him tense up again. “That little girl… you _knew me_ , didn’t you? From before?”

There was a thread of doubt now, winding through Ren's mind. Not just for this conversation but for himself, for where it would take him if they followed this path. “She could have been anyone,” he said, but drew up short when a sharp burst of emotion from Rey washed over him.

“She wasn't just anyone,” Rey interrupted, her hand cutting the air. “She was _me_ , and she knew you, and you knew her, and... _who am I?_ ”

The question echoed back and forth through both their minds. For as long as she'd been asking it of herself, Rey sensed that Kylo Ren had been asking the same thing, both of them struggling to find places in worlds where they were never meant to be, where they could never truly belong. 

And on the heels of that, a flood of memories.

_He was leaning over the edge of the bed, staring at the squirming, whining bundle in his aunt's arms. The voices were far away for now, so he could smile and not feel false, touch his cousin and not feel like he was polluting her and being polluted._

_“This is your cousin, Ben,” his aunt said. “Her name is--”_

Time sped by.

_He was awake in the room he shared with other Jedi trainees his age; they all slept soundly but he did not, his mind too full of rage to settle. His uncle had broken off a lesson to go run after his young daughter, and when he had watched Luke scoop her up into his arms with a smile he was reminded of the fact that his own father had abandoned him to this place, that he'd known Ben didn't want to leave (it wasn't safe, it wasn't safe) and had let him go anyway._

__You know what you have to do, _the voice said, and under his covers, Kylo gripped the lightsaber he'd built in secret and set his jaw. Sensing his agreement, the voice and its attendant emotions turned soothing, praising, told him he'd made the right, difficult choice._

__I will send the Knights to you, _the voice said._ Command them, and I will give you the glory you so rightly deserve.

Gasping, Rey tried to shut it off. She reached into her center for the place where she and Luke had formed shields against her bond with Ren, but the storm ripped them away from her.

“You wanted this,” he ground out, and suddenly he had gotten a lot closer, his hands gripping her shoulders. He looked pale, his eyes wild, and Rey could not look away even as tears spilled over onto her cheeks. His cheeks were wet, too, and she could sense turmoil in his own mind as his fingers held, vice-tight, while she struggled to get away. “ _You asked for this!_ ”

Then he was dragging her along with him, back to that moment in time, the nightmare they shared. She saw it all happen again, saw her body crumple against the rock and lie still, _too_ still, in the mud. She heard the voice whisper to him, give him his title, call him _Kylo Ren_.

Under it, beneath the hate and boiling rage as a Kylo Ren just a few years younger than she was now turned on his heel and stalked toward the command shuttle waiting to take him to his new Master, she felt the thin and fraying thread of regret that he'd killed his cousin, Rey—

“No! _No!_ ” 

Ren tore himself out of her mind and they both stared at each other, gasping for breath. 

“I don't regret _any_ of it!” he shouted at her, but the way his eyes darted around the room, not even lighting on her once as he spoke, betrayed him. 

“I'm in your _mind_ ,” Rey panted, angrily wiping tears from her cheeks. She would not, she would not... but the weight of this knowledge was almost too much to bear. “You knew, you knew all along! You bastard, you _knew!_ ”

She whirled, intending to leave, and ran face-first into Luke. He was standing in the doorway staring at her, white as the snows of Hoth. Anger boiled up in her, but it ebbed and was replaced by hurt, betrayal, and Luke rocked back as if slapped in the face. 

“You knew,” she whispered. “You knew I am...” _your daughter_ , but she couldn't say it. “You didn't say anything.”

“Rey—“

“You didn't say anything, you _abandoned_ me, you _left me behind!_ ”

She shoved past him and began to run, barreling through the corridors until she found herself outside again, on the flattened, dusty landing area. Ignoring the hands that reached for her, the questions and worry that pressed in on her from every angle, Rey sprinted for the _Falcon_. Chewbacca wasn't on board, but she'd flown this alone before, and she had the Force this time to help her flip switches and activate systems.

She didn't look back as she blasted off into space, and muted her comm so she didn't have to hear the queries. Here, she was alone, and she could bury her face in her hands and cry.

*

The base was in an uproar. Rumors swirled for hours, and people gathered in clumps in the mess halls and maintenance bays, whispering.

Poe tried not to pay attention to the increase in whispers as he and Finn walked through to General Organa's office. Finn was already unsettled enough; earlier in the day (right when it all went down, he'd found out) he'd suddenly jerked around, looking over his shoulder. Then he'd started _screaming_ for Rey, and Poe had been near tears himself before he'd gotten Finn alone to a quiet place and calmed him down enough to get something out of him. The question of _why_ Finn had reacted in such a way was one Poe didn't want to consider right now. Sooner or later he'd have to, but hopefully Rey would have come back from her solo trip before then.

Muffled shouting was coming from the General's office, and they waited outside, awkward, until the door opened and what looked like all the currently on-planet Resistance leadership walked out. There were several holoprojectors set up around the room when General Organa gestured Finn and Poe inside, and they all rose in the air and came to her outstretched hand. She tucked them away in a drawer, then sat heavily.

Poe went for the couch initially, but hesitated; Luke Skywalker sat at one end, his hair a mess and his face haggard. He seemed to come back from whatever galaxy he was in long enough to gesture to the couch, indicating they should sit. Poe didn't feel comfortable with that, but he did let Finn sit down and pulled over a chair so he could sit close. The General looked between the three of them, sighed, and dragged her own chair over.

“I'm sure that you've heard about fifty versions of what happened earlier, but I'll leave it to my brother to tell you the truth.”

She fixed Luke with a baleful stare until he refocused on them. “It's my fault,” and he sounded miserable about it. “I... there's something you both must know, and I really do need you two to hear it from me. Rey – she's my daughter.”

“ _What?_ ”

Luke put up a hand, and Finn settled back down into his seat. He did shift his forearm so that it was pressed against Poe's, and in turn Poe slid his fingers over, hooking Finn's little finger with his own.

“I want to tell _her_ the whole story first,” he continued roughly. “Rey... deserves that from me. But that's why she tore out of here – she found out in a way I never would have wanted her to.”

“Kylo Ren,” Finn muttered, and Poe felt his fingers tighten. “He did this.”

Luke nodded, and not even when Rey had first brought him back from Ahch-To had the Jedi Master looked this sad. “I never wanted her to find out like that,” he repeated in a whisper. “All I ever wanted to do was protect her. From the moment I held her in my arms.”

“It's backfired, hasn't it.” Leia took a breath, let it out. “We’re calculating a vector on her hyperspace jump. Once we figure out where she's gone, we'll send some of our pilots out after her—“

“With all due respect, General Organa, I'd like to go.” Poe felt Finn's hand move to cover all of his, and it gave him resolve. “With Finn, too. She's...”

“Important to both of you?” Leia's mouth twitched. “We know.”

“I _really_ have to teach Rey better shielding. _If_ she'll ever talk to me again.”

“ _Don't,_ ” Leia admonished. “All right, Dameron. I'll comm you with some likely destinations as soon as I have them.”

“Thank you, General.” Finn seemed to want to ask her something more but didn't. When he rose, Poe went with him, keeping hold of Finn's hand when he could feel the other man shaking. His own assigned quarters were closest, so he took them there, using the small food unit to get them both cups of Yavin-style hot chocolate when he'd settled Finn on the couch. Poe took a sip from his, but Finn just held his mug in his hands.

“She was in so much pain,” he said at last. “Whatever was going on, I... I _felt_ it. Why did I feel it?”

“I wish I could tell you.” Poe leaned against Finn's shoulder, frustrated; he could shoot holes in planet-sized weapons and thread his ship through blockades any day, but when someone he cared about was hurting... no, that wasn't fair. It was just something he didn't know anything about. “Do you... is she okay?”

“I don't know.” Finn took a sip of his drink and it seemed to brace him a bit. “I wish she hadn't just. Run off.”

“Me too. We'll talk to her when we find her.” Poe let his forehead drop to Finn's shoulder. “We'll bring her home, okay?”

*

_Now you've done it._

_This isn't what I wanted to happen!_

_That ought to be your family motto._

_Help nothing, this talk does._

A new voice spoke. _Master Yoda is right._ Then, more gently: _They're in so much pain. This imbalance has cost them both so much._

_Interfere this time we cannot. We must not. Learned our lesson, we did._

_And I paid the price, and my children and their children are still paying it._

_No use moping about it now. We've got work to do._

*

Rey woke slowly, painfully. The pilot's seat of the _Falcon_ wasn't made for sleeping and wasn't even particularly comfortable, but she'd dropped into an exhausted doze just after moving into orbit around a desolate moon in a nearby system. Stiff, Rey sat up and began querying the navicomputer, trying to determine her location.

_Rey_

Her fingers paused on the controls. That hadn't felt like the press of Kylo's mind, and yet... well, she wouldn't put it past either Poe or Finn to hide out on board, though she'd thought them both safely out of her way. Guilt stabbed at her heart for leaving them, but...

“Is someone there?” she called, but only heard the hum and rattle of the _Falcon's_ engines. Shaking her head, Rey went back to her work.

_I'm here, Rey_

She slammed her hands down on the console – a few systems beeped protest and started flashing amber lights at her, and hurriedly Rey brought everything back to optimal before she got up and stalked toward the back of the ship. If someone had thought they'd be clever and follow her, she'd give them a piece of her mind.

But after checking the ship from top to bottom and finding no one, Rey began to wonder if she was perhaps going mad. Spending enough time around Kylo Ren had to have some kind of effect on her, after all, it wouldn’t surprise her…

“Rey.”

She drew her lightsaber in a fluid motion, igniting it as she spun. Had the speaker been corporeal he would have been dead, but she watched as the blade passed right through, a long diagonal slash from shoulder to hip. The man in Jedi robes watched with interest as she brought her weapon back up to guard.

“Who are you?” Rey demanded of him. There was something familiar about this man, though, something in the tilt of his lips and the clear blue sparkle of his eyes, something she couldn’t put her finger on.

“Anakin Skywalker,” the man replied, and suddenly the familiarity made a great deal more sense. Those eyes were Luke’s eyes, that smile belonged to both the General and her brother… and her, Rey supposed. She shut off her lightsaber but didn’t hook it to her belt just yet.

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

“I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it. I’ve been told that I have to be cryptic and not interfere too much, but I was never good at any of that. Besides, I've seen what it does to my family, and I'm not going to add to it. Can we sit?”

Rey stared at the dejarik table when he took a seat. “Why are you here?”

Anakin grinned up at her. “Right to the point, I like you. I just want to talk, there are some things that I think ought to have been said a long time ago.”

She clipped her lightsaber to her belt and sat, watchin as Anakin's blue-limned fingers twisted around themselves. A nervous ghost! She never thought—well, she never thought she'd meet the ghost of an ancestor at all. He was watching her, his gaze distant, and she narrowed her eyes.

“What are you looking at?”

“You look a lot like Padmé. My wife, uh, your grandmother,” he explained. “I wish she'd been able to join us. She always had a way with words, and if anyone deserved to come back and be able to speak with their descendants it's her, not me.”

“Whatever happened to her?”

“I failed her. She paid the price for my mistakes,” Anakin replied sadly. “And it's come down to you and Ben, this debt I've incurred against the galaxy. I _hate_ it.”

“I don't want anything to do with him. But I feel like I can't escape whatever's bound us together.” Rey looked up. “We're literally bound together, you know?”

“It's necessary, and it'll make you both stronger over time. You two have a task to complete, and one of you alone will not be able to do it. You need each other.”

“I said I don't want anything to do with him!”

“I know, and believe me, I understand. But you won't be able to stop Snoke without him.”

Rey felt a jolt deep down in her gut. “Stop Snoke?”

“The two of you have that power. But more than that, more than any—“ and Anakin's voice became a little bitter here, his mouth twisted down in a scowl as he waved a hand, “—grand cosmic destiny, your strength lies in your bonds. I know what he's done to you, to people you love. He's going to be paying for it for a long time – those kinds of things leave shadows on the spirit that don't ever go away, really. But hope isn't lost for him.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Forgive him?”

“Do you _want_ to forgive him?”

Rey opened her mouth to say _no, no I don't, he invaded my mind, he gave Poe nightmares, violated us,_ but shut it again. “I don't know,” she replied at last. “Not right now.”

“That's fair. You're my granddaughter, I trust you to know your own heart.” Anakin reached out, then hesitated, his fingers curling against the board. “I forget, I'm not really here,” he grumbled. “The worst part about being a ghost is that you can't actually _do_ things, you can only talk about them and hope other people take action. I can feel, though. I can feel that you're hurting, that you feel betrayed, like there's nothing but space under your feet and nothing to hold on to—hey, uh, don't cry—“

He looked pained, and Rey ducked her head to swipe at the tears. “All I've done is cry—“

“No, don't apologize, you're not wrong to do it. I just... wish I could do more to help. But you have people who love you. The pilot, the stormtrooper—former stormtrooper, sorry—and yes, my son, your father, he loves you too. He wanted to tell you right away, you know, but he was worried it'd drive you away, and he didn't want to lose you again so soon after finding you.”

Rey realized her anger had faded. She was still upset, but it wasn't the white-hot burn that it had been when she'd blasted off of Ryloth. “I wish he'd told me.”

“I wish he had, too. But then I might not have had any reason to come talk to you. I've watched you for a long time, Rey. If I could have I'd have done something about what my son did, but you... it's only made you kind. I'm so proud of you. That probably doesn't mean much to you, coming from me, but...”

The way he said it, how heartbreakingly earnest he was, made her smile. “No, it does mean a lot. But... I'm meant to stop Snoke? With _Kylo Ren?_ ”

“That's our hope, anyway.” Anakin scowled at the table. “Me, personally? I'd rather drop all this _destiny_ stuff and let you two decide what you want to do, but Snoke has torn my family apart, and if I weren't dead I'd kill him myself.”

“He – Kylo Ren – he has so much darkness in him. I don't know.... I don't know what to do.”

“Neither do I.”

“Really?”

“I don't have all the answers, Rey. Not even now.” Anakin seemed to look up at somewhere over her shoulder. “Your friends—er, your lovers—uh, whatever they are, they'll be here soon. Are you ready to go back?”

Rey bit her lip, but nodded. “I've been rather foolish, running off like this, haven't I?”

“Probably. But I get the sense they'll understand, in time. It'll take work.”

“They're worth it.” Rey stood, her fingers fluttering against the tabletop. “I... thank you. Grandfather.”

Anakin's smile became brilliant again, his eyes sparkling even through the odd translucent haze his body was limned with. “Anything for you, Rey,” he replied. “If you need me... I can't promise I'll come every time, but whenever I can, I will. Goodbye, and good luck.”

Rey started back toward the cockpit but turned to say her own goodbye. Anakin was already gone.

*

Finn had been quiet the whole time they'd been in hyperspace. Poe snuck glances now and then; his own instinct was always to find out what was wrong and fix it, but he had the idea that wouldn't be the right approach this time. So he let Finn take his hand, gripping it like Poe was going to be the next one to run off into space, and waited.

“Do you think I'm a Jedi?” 

Poe looked over, surprised. Finn was still staring at the shifting colors of hyperspace, his thumb still absently running back and forth over Poe's knuckles. “What makes you think you are?” he asked.

“When Rey... when whatever happened with her and Kylo Ren was going on, I could feel it.”

“Maybe she was projecting? She's done that before.”

“This was different. It wasn't the first time something like that happened to me, either.”

“Don't you think Luke Skywalker or Rey would have said something before now?”

“I guess.” Finn didn't sound convinced, but he did take his hand back and start bringing his console to life again. “How much longer?”

“About fifteen minutes. Let's hope that we've got good intel, otherwise this is gonna be another quick stop. Unless you've got a feeling?”

Finn gave him a look, but his fingers paused on the controls. “I... maybe? I don't know what the feelings are supposed to feel like.”

“Well... I guess we'll find out soon.”

They dropped out of hyperspace on the outskirts of the system and began scanning. Their ship, an old B-wing/E that someone had dug up and donated to the Resistance, had been fitted with an extensive sensor suite and was usually called on to do reconnaissance. It could fit two, though, so it had been one of the only sensible options. They didn't really have many.

“Got something,” Finn said at last. “Bearing four-mark-eight, do you see it? It's orbiting that moon—“

The comm crackled then, and both of them exhaled slowly when they heard Rey's voice. “ _It's me, you're in the right place,_ ” she said. “ _I was about to make the jump back._ ”

“It's good to hear your voice,” Poe replied. “Do you, uh, feel better?”

“ _I do, I really do._ ” 

“We're glad.” Finn took a breath. “Still a little upset that you didn't trust us, but... we'll talk when we're back at the base.”

There was a pause, and when Rey responded she sounded sad, but resolute. “ _I understand. I'm just... thank you, thank you both. For not abandoning me._ ”

“We would never do that.” Poe reached up, inputting Ryloth into the navicomputer. “You ready?”

“ _Yes. Give me a few minutes to make the calculations – the navicomputer here is good, but not fast._ ”

“You got it. Signal when you're ready.”

“Hey. Hey, Poe...”

“Yeah?”

Finn was staring down at his console, brow furrowed. “Can you look at this? These sensor readings are weird.”

Poe called up his own display, mirroring it to Finn's. “I see it. What _is_ that? Can you resolve the signal?”

“Working on it. Rey, are you picking up anything weird on your scanners? Some kind of transmission?”

“ _Uh... hang on, let me..._ yeah, I see it.”

“Uh, Poe? This transmission is encrypted using a First Order code.”

“What, you're sure?”

Finn's fingers tapped out commands. “I recognize it. Hang on, I'm trying to decrypt it.”

Poe was about to ask what in all the hells a First Order transmission was doing out here where they could intercept it when the _Falcon_ flipped over and made for the asteroid field between the third and fourth planets in the system, and Poe hurriedly followed. “Rey! What are you—“

“ _Follow me! And keep quiet,_ ” she snapped, and then the comm went dead. Poe gripped the controls and followed her into the asteroid field, sticking close when she set the _Falcon_ down on a large, slowly spinning rock. He followed suit, setting their ship down on another asteroid that was within comm range.

“What is it?”

“ _There's some kind of installation on one of the third planet's moons,_ ” she said. “ _I picked it up when I was tracing the transmission's source. They must not have seen me, I've been out here for hours._ ”

“Then hopefully they've missed us, too.” Poe shut down as many of the ship's systems as he could. “How's the decryption coming?”

“Give me a minute, this was meant to be done on one of the capital ships, I'm working from memory here...”

“ _What do we do? There's no guarantee that they won't catch us on the way out of the system._ ”

“Hey, guys? I decrypted the message, and...”

Poe read the decrypted text and felt the blood drain from his face. “This has to get back to the General _now_ ,” he said. “I don't care if they see us, she needs to know.”

*

They’d left him alone after Rey had gone. He was glad for it; his chest felt too tight and his skin too hot, like something in him was going to burst free at the slightest touch, mental or physical.

For a while Kylo Ren had paced the floor of his cell, his mind full of a strange unsettled energy that he’d been able to relieve before by slashing consoles to pieces. Now he was rendered impotent, his lightsaber locked away somewhere and everything in his room removed save the barest essentials, and so he could only pace and snarl and privately, secretly, wish someone would just come so he could _do something_ to release this energy. It was easier to act, rather than think. Thinking led to… places he didn’t want to go. After a few hours he exhausted himself, collapsing onto his pallet in a restless sleep.

_Ben_

The voice, heard and not heard, woke him immediately. It triggered memories, feelings – dread, fear, elation, anger stoked to a hot and all-consuming flame.

“Supreme Leader?” he whispered, his voice soft and swallowed by the darkness. It was the middle of the night, but Kylo Ren sat up immediately, reaching out for that place in his mind that Snoke had always occupied. For as long as he could remember Snoke had been there, but once more he encountered that odd barrier – it was growing stronger, subsumed under pure light that made him wince and grip the edge of the pallet hard. Whatever or whoever was trying to reach him, it wasn’t Snoke, and he closed his eyes, willing the barrier away, trying in vain to push it from his mind.

“It’s no use.”

Kylo opened his eyes again. A man in old-style Jedi robes was sitting before him in the cell’s molded plastic chair. Kylo realized he could see the outline of the chair through the man, and that a faint glow lit the inside of the cell, emanating out from this mystery guest. Stretching out his hand he tried to probe this intruder, but that only made the man smile.

“I’m not a hallucination,” he said. “And you can’t really make me do anything, as impressive as your abilities are in that respect. One of the benefits of being a ghost.”

He lowered his hand. “Who are you?”

“You don’t know me—well. Of course you don’t. But who do you _think_ I am?”

There was something familiar about the man, something that resonated with a place deep within him that Kylo Ren tried to ignore but never fully could. His heart beat more wildly, the pure light in his mind threatening to come to the fore and take over, chasing the shadows back to the edges where they’d been before… things. 

“How am I supposed to know? I’ve never seen you before.”

“Only because I’ve been kept from you by forces beyond even my control. You might not be able to use your particular Force abilities on me, but that doesn’t mean I’m omnipotent. Not for lack of trying, anyway,” the man grumbled, folding his hands into his sleeves. “I am Anakin Skywalker. I’m your grandfather, Ben.”

“That’s not my name,” he replied, but it was automatic, just like the knee-jerk denial. “You’re not my grandfather. Where’s your armor, your mask, you’ve always appeared—“

“—as I was in the darkest time of my life,” Anakin interrupted. “Which you know. I know my daughter’s told you our family history.”

“ _Her_ version of it.”

“Leia’s a politician, but she’d never lie to you. Nor would I. Family shouldn’t have secrets.”

“Tell that to _my_ family.” A part of him that had held out against the whispers, the part that had retreated deep within him, raised its head. It ached, and Kylo crossed his arms. “They’ve never done anything but keep secrets from me. Supreme Leader is the only one who’s ever been honest. And my grandfather’s _real_ spirit.”

“You don’t believe that was me. Not really.”

_Not really,_ he thought, but the shadows nipped at his mind, and Kylo clenched his hands so hard his nails bit into the skin. The pain sharpened his focus. “I…”

“And you don’t really believe that Snoke’s been honest with you. Why else would he have told you to do what you did on Starkiller base when he knew it wouldn’t be enough?”

“It’s a flaw within me, a weakness that kept me from reaching my full potential after I killed Han Solo,” Kylo Ren replied stubbornly. His nails bit deeper into his palms. “Supreme Leader is wise, he wouldn’t lead me astray.”

The man – Anakin – _the ghost_ sighed, and a sense of sadness washed over Ren. “Ben, I don’t want you to make the mistakes I did. That path I walked… it was the wrong one, and everyone I’ve ever loved has paid the price for it. Including you.”

“I’m only trying to finish what Darth Vader started – what _you_ started at the end of the Clone Wars, if you’re really my grandfather.”

“In a way, you’re right. But not how you think. I was told from the moment Master Qui-Gon found me that I was meant to bring balance to the Force, and I think that my children, and now you and Rey, are the fulfillment of that. A destiny I wish you’d never been saddled with, but I am only of the Force. I don’t control its currents.”

“He wouldn’t lie to me,” Kylo Ren repeated, but he couldn’t muster the conviction, and too many questions had begun to crowd his mind now, this man’s words making too much sense and pulling at strings he’d thought he’d severed long ago. 

“Go ahead,” the man said gently. “Ask.”

“If who I saw wasn’t you—if who I saw wasn’t my grandfather, then… how is it you’ve never come to me before?”

“I couldn’t. I tried, Ben, I watched what happened and I did everything in my power to stop it, but by the time we found a way… it was that night. It was that night at the temple, and I could only stand by as someone else wearing the face of the monster I was rather than the man I am subverted your mind. It was the most painful thing I’ve ever had to endure, and believe me, that’s not a statement I can make lightly.”

Flashes of memory, things shared between him and Rey earlier that day – the pain of trying to kill his own cousin, the screams of the dying, the hiss and sizzle of his lightsaber in the rain, and below all that, a faint voice pleading with him to stop. Kylo Ren felt a sharp sting as he broke skin. “What stopped you?”

“ _He_ did. Snoke took my name, my face. He becomes what he needs to become to achieve his ends. He’s…” the man, Anakin, whoever—he shivered, an odd thing for a ghost to do. “Palpatine was evil. Snoke is worse.”

“Grandfather said—he said I was meant for more than the life of a Jedi—he said he could help me be great, have the strength to live up to my family’s name—“

“But you don’t use your family’s name now. You’ve taken the title Snoke gave you, you’ve forgotten who you _are_. Why do you suppose Snoke let that happen if you’re meant to be my true heir?”

He couldn’t answer it. Everything he tried to say stuck in his throat for a lie, or didn’t fit, and it wasn’t until he felt an icy-hot sensation on his hand that he looked up to see that Anakin had risen and was running ghostly fingers along the back of his knuckles. Ren opened his hand; there was blood under his nails, crescent gouges in his palm that oozed red. The pain didn’t make him feel powerful now. It just made him feel empty.

“I don’t know who I am,” he whispered. “If I’m not Kylo Ren, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be.”

“I can’t tell you that either. That’s a question everyone asks themselves at some point in their lives. You were given an answer at a time when you should have been allowed to figure it out for yourself. I can’t… I’m not able to blame you for believing it. I did, too.”

“You were wrong.”

“So I was. But I knew it, in the end. I knew who I was, really.”

Kylo Ren was silent, his throat closed to words. The ghost – Anakin, he couldn’t deny it – had shattered something he had left unnamed, and now like a flood it filled him with years of all the thoughts he’d pushed away for not fitting in with his training, his decisions.

“I’ve done too much to turn back,” he whispered. “How am I supposed to… stop? It’s too late for me, it’s too late to stop it…”

“Listen to me,” Anakin said, and he turned his face up to see his grandfather still there, and felt nothing but a warm compassion from him, a sense that he was not alone in his suffering, that the isolation had been artificial. “It is not too late. It is _never_ too late. I thought the same way, Ben, I thought that there was nothing that could be done, I told my own son that he couldn’t save me. But he did, and at the end… at the end I made it right.”

His eyes stung, and at last he bowed his head, unable to look at his grandfather any longer. “I don’t know how I can make it right. I’ve… the things I’ve done, Grandfather—how am I to fix it?”

“You’re my grandson,” Anakin replied gently, kneeling. “You are a Skywalker. You’ll know how to make it right when it matters. I really wish I had a simple answer, I’ve always been a simple person, but these things… they’re too personal. I’ll guide you as much as I can, you and Rey both. She can help you, if you let her. Or if she lets you.”

He choked out a sob. “My cousin,” he groaned. “I tried to kill her. I left her for _dead_.”

“But she lives. You two have a very special bond, Ben. If the two of you work together, there’s no telling what you can accomplish.”

“I killed my _father_.” He put his head in his shaking hands. “I looked into his eyes as I ran him through with my lightsaber. I thought it would make me strong.”

“I killed an entire temple full of Jedi, from the oldest Master down to the younglings in the crèche, when my own wife carried our children within her.” Anakin’s voice was full of pain. “Our family can be as foolish as they are powerful, but together we can do such great things.”

His grandfather fell silent then, unable to touch as his shoulders (and how did he even think of himself now? Kylo Ren? Ben Solo? Who _was_ he?) as they shook, unable to wipe the tears from his face, but as he wept he felt his grandfather’s mind like a warm blanket, layer after layer, cocooning him and cradling him. For the first time in his living memory, the darkness – that void that had always been there – was silent and small, and the light grew and grew within him until he felt burned from the inside out, gasping for breath as it swept through his mind.

“Where do I begin?”

“Only you know that. Give it some thought, but I think you already have the answer. You just have to understand it.” Anakin cocked his head as if listening to something, then grinning. “They’re all sorts of upset, the others, but I’m not going to play cryptic Jedi Master with my family. I told that to Rey, and I’m telling you now too. It’s only hurt us. I won’t be the source of any more of it.”

“The others?”

“The others like me. Be glad you’re not having to deal with them, you’d never learn a damned thing without having to disinter it from the Dune Sea with your own two hands.”

He choked out a hysterical laugh, and Anakin brushed against his mind with soothing, calming affection again.

“I’ve got to go. You have all that you need to keep going for now,” he said. “I’ll always be here watching over you both, Ben. Trust yourself, trust your heart. It will know.”

Then he was alone… but not really alone, not anymore. He knew that now. It felt… right.

He took three deep breaths and lay back onto his pallet to think, to digest. There was the inkling, the beginning of a thought, and he pulled on it, let it lead him where he needed to go.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my betas for helping me out, as always. It wouldn't be half as good without their aid.
> 
> I do want to warn people - the Canon-Typical Violence tag comes into play here, as there's an instance of Force choking. If you're squicked by such things, scroll down a little past the paragraph that starts "It came without warning".
> 
> Enjoy!

“We sent a party to the listening post on Orvax,” General Leia said when she reentered the room. Finn had fallen into a restless doze and jerked awake as soon as the door opened; Rey had simply been pale and quiet, arms wrapped around her knees.

They both sat up now. The General gave all of them, especially Rey, a long and searching look. Whatever she saw either wasn't important or was acceptable, because she sat down at the head of the table.

“We neutralized the First Order personnel there without alerting suspicion, or so we think,” she continued. “We're running the post now, pretending that it's still business as usual with the help of some very pragmatic stormtroopers – who have all asked to talk to you as soon as possible, Finn – but it seems like that transmission you intercepted isn't a one-off thing or a misdirect. The Order's prepping for another push to recover Ben. And they've explicitly named Rey as well. The bounty for you is nearly as much as the Empire was offering for me.”

“Oh,” Rey murmured.

“Not that the other two of you are off the hook. Finn, you're worth even more than Rey is.”

“What?”

“I guess they don't like their stormtroopers defecting.” The General sighed. “I've talked to the leadership. We can't move again, not yet – we're scouting other sites but none have come back as suitable for a full base relocation. We've grown too big for other ones. We have to make a push now, a hard one that'll knock the First Order off-balance.”

“Why isn't the leadership here?” Poe asked curiously.

“Because I know that whatever you come up with, and it _will_ be you, the three of you will be in the thick of it. Anything else is just a distraction. To that end, I've had our counterintelligence put out information, tagged for the agent inside the First Order, that says we're planning a large-scale attack against the First Order's shipyards at Yag'Dhul.”

“We don't have the ships—“

“No,” the General agreed. “We don't. So get to work on ideas. I want them by tomorrow morning.”

*

“...and our intelligence reports indicate that the Resistance is pulling away from other systems. We've sent out feelers to investigate what their plans may be, and to locate their new base. Listening to New Republic transmissions has not gleaned any new information on either Resistance movements – since they use private, non-government channels – nor has it told us of any high-profile trials such as the sort that might indicate they've moved Kylo Ren to a New Republic world. Therefore we must assume he is still with the Resistance. Your orders, Supreme Leader?”

There was no response. Hux waited, tucking his datapad into a pocket of his greatcoat. As of late these oddly-timed silences from the Supreme Leader had been frequent, the great scarred brow drawn down as though whatever he was doing, it required a great deal of concentration. 

He supposed it had something to do with Ren, as usual. He'd been performing a search to the best of his ability, given that the fleet had things to do like protect supply routes and major bases (even without the encrypted information only accessible by clearance code the Resistance had gotten a lot of very sensitive data), and though he had several likely candidate worlds based on the political affiliations of the Resistance leadership, sympathetic governments, and projections, his hands were still somewhat tied.

Truth be told, it was beginning to be irritating, this obsession with Kylo Ren. It wasn't logical to be dedicating so much still-finite resources to finding and retrieving one man. Particularly because that one man wouldn't be of any use for _days_ after being returned, given what little Hux had been unfortunate enough to see after Starkiller. Snoke did not tolerate failure, and capture by the enemy constituted the worst kind of failure.

“They're planning something,” the Supreme Leader rumbled at last. He sounded strangely calm, but a shudder ran down Hux's spine anyway. He straightened against it and set his jaw.

“I'll assign more staff to intelligence—“

“No. Your forces have proved inadequate.”

Hux glanced to the side, to empty space where he had expected a helmeted man radiating smugness in need of one of Hux's more pointed withering glares, then quickly recovered. “Supreme Leader, we faced surprising opposition in the one attempt we've made—“

“The girl complicates matters.”

“The Jakku scavenger?” Hux couldn't help it; he'd had to listen to Ren stalking about smashing up consoles and muttering about this girl often enough to remember the sick taste at the back of his throat whenever he heard it. “She's but one lone—“

“She is not alone. The Resistance was allowed to bring Skywalker back to them, which was a failure you and Kylo Ren shared, I may add.” The chill in Snoke's voice was glacial. “No. This requires something more, something beyond the capability of the fleet alone.”

“...Supreme Leader?”

“I am sending the Knights to you.”

Had he not the amount of fortitude befitting a General, Hux might have let his knees weaken enough to drop him to the floor. “The Knights, Supreme Leader? Is that—I would not want to trouble your personal—“

“Oh, no, General, it won't be any trouble at all.” Snoke seemed amused by his discomfort, and annoyance replaced the sudden weakness, annoyance that bolstered him. “The Knights simply have a more specific skill set that I think may be required in the retrieval of their Master. It would be a prudent use of resources, don't you agree?”

Hux knew better than to disagree. He had only seen the Knights of Ren in action twice in his entire career, and had hoped that the second time was the last. They were... uniquely effective, it was true, and he said as much, proud that he kept the tremor out of his voice.

“They are at that. You will receive them with all due respect. Remember, General, they act with my will and speak with my voice.”

“I will not forget, Supreme Leader.”

“I need not remind you of the consequences of failure.”

Hux thought of blank stares and automatons in the skin of men. “I am aware of them.”

“Report to me any progress.”

The hologram dissolved, and Hux took a moment to take three deep, even breaths, collecting his scattered composure. Then he turned on his heel and swept from the holoprojection room. If the Knights were coming to the _Finalizer_ he would need to make certain preparations, and make sure the crew was briefed. He would have no stupid casualties this time.

*

Rey was silent on the way back to Finn's room. She hadn't wanted to be alone; Kylo Ren was rattling around in the back of her head in a right state when it already felt full to bursting, and Rey worried that if she tried to spend time by herself she would actually go mad, lost in their shared thoughts. They were supposed to kill Snoke? Her grandfather was proud of her? 

_Some days I wish I'd never left Jakku,_ she thought, while knowing it was a lie. If she'd never left she'd have never found this bond with Finn and Poe, and she wouldn't trade that for a simpler life.

Now she just hoped that she hadn't mucked it up too badly. 

The door to Finn's quarters hissed shut, and while Finn set the privacy controls on the doors and Poe went to make them all something to drink, Rey shifted from the bed to the molded plastic chair and finally settled herself on the floor, her back resting against the wall, drawing inward again.

Finn sat beside her first. He wanted to be close, and she could sense turmoil in him, but he kept himself just close enough for their knees to brush. Poe did the same, when he came over with three steaming mugs.

“Tea,” he said. “Figured we could all use it. So.”

They were both looking at her. Rey hooked her mug with a finger but didn't pick it up, just stared into the slowly swirling liquid. “I'm sorry,” she told Finn and Poe. “I shouldn't have just run off like I did.”

“You scared us,” Finn told her. “We didn't know what was going on, you just _left_.”

“I’d just…” Rey choked on the words, and Poe reached out, his fingers warm and gentle on her cheek.

“We know,” he told her. “The General and Master Skywalker called us in after you blasted out of here. They explained what happened. Rey… it’s a lot to take in.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No!” Finn looked embarrassed for a moment, but then set his jaw. “We just… next time you have any life-changing revelations, we’d like it if you talked to us, rather than running away.”

“It’s becoming a trend, isn’t it?” Rey smiled at them, feeling lighter. “I’m glad you aren’t mad. I was worried I’d lost you both.”

“You’re stuck with us.” Poe scooted over so he could rest his arm behind her shoulders, and Finn moved to bracket her on the other side, face tucked into her throat. “If you want us.”

There was more to that statement than four words could contain, and Rey knew it, and she knew immediately what she wanted. “I do.” The light grew inside her chest, and idly she thought that maybe Anakin had been right, maybe there was enough in her for Kylo Ren too, if he ever wanted it. “I do want you both.”

She closed her eyes, reaching out to both of them and wrapping them in her love and care, in her light. Finn’s breath hitched against her skin, and Poe grinned, his lips brushing her temple, and they lay like that for a long time.

“Just promise you’ll tell us when something’s bothering you?” Poe asked, when she’d nearly fallen asleep. “We deserve that much.”

“I promise.” Rey pressed her nose into Poe’s hair, her thumb stroking Finn’s cheek. “I think that’s the only way this… _this_ will work. With three of us.”

“I think so, too.” Finn shifted against her side and Rey turned to him, pressing their foreheads together. It was odd, but it felt good, felt _right_ , and she was full of their love and their light, and when Finn moved up a little and kissed her it flowed between them, echoing back and forth and growing until she gasped into his mouth, her eyes stinging. 

“You…” she whispered, opening her eyes just a bit. Finn’s eyes were open a crack too, liquid and dark. “You have it, too.”

“That, or I’m crazy. But in a good way.” Finn wet his lips and kissed her again, and Poe was at her back, his arms reaching out to encircle them both, leaning forward so Finn could kiss him over her shoulder. Finn glowed bright too, now that she knew what she was looking at, and Rey’s fingers tightened in his shirt.

Poe turned her head toward him then and she could taste Finn on his tongue. Force or not, she could feel the connection between them, growing strong and vibrant to match what she had with Finn – maybe what had been there since the day they’d met, just waiting for them to realize it.

She didn’t know she was crying until they’d moved the furniture away from the middle of the floor and made a nest of blankets and pillows, as her hands slid up Finn’s bare torso. Poe leaned over and pressed his lips to her cheek and then to her lips and she tasted salt.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. His fingers were low on her hip, twitching against the sensitive skin there. He looked – felt – concerned, and though Finn’s mouth was currently a distracting warmth against her throat and moving lower, she reached over and rubbed her thumb over Poe’s lips.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she whispered, pulling him down to her, eyes going heavy-lidded and finally closing as Finn’s mouth moved from her hip to her thigh, his shoulders strong and solid under her calves. “Nothing’s wrong.”

*

As soon as she saw who walked off the shuttle, she knew she had to report back.

But she stayed in her place, back straight and eyes forward, playing the role she'd taken (as she'd been taught, so many years ago), burying everything about her deep down under layers of smokescreens so the restless and dangerous group of beings standing in the gleaming main hangar bay of the _Finalizer_ had no idea that another Force-sensitive was standing twenty feet away from them.

The Knights of Ren were, as she'd once whispered into her wedding ring-turned-transmitter, a blaster two seconds away from overload. Though she knew they all deferred to Kylo Ren for whatever mad reason, his absence was the reason for their presence, and without him to keep them in line...

Even General Hux seemed put off by them, unusually stiff and clearly suppressing the urge to sneer. The Knights, she had found, were either revered or reviled, and it seemed the General belonged to the latter camp. That was good; she could use that, if it came down to it. But right now she had to think of a way to divest herself of the need for an officer of her standing to attend any welcoming gatherings, such as they'd be on a working ship; the longer she was in the company of these maniacs the sooner her Force ability would be discovered, and the Knights had been the ones to help Kylo Ren systematically hunt down and kill all overt Force-sensitives after what had happpened at the Temple. They _liked_ killing, and had done it far better than the fifteen-year-old boy who'd led them across the galaxy. The Knights of Ren were Snoke's personal commandos with the Force in their hands, and they were terrifying.

She felt, more than saw, the mask of one of them turn in her direction. Quickly she stuffed her mind down, thought _small, small,_ and made herself appear as composed as the officers around her. The blank, chromed gaze lingered on her section for a moment, then slid away. She didn't relax. Letting one's guard down had been punished during her training as a girl and teenager, and it had taken years of distance from that to begin to be comfortable doing it herself.

The Knights were escorted out of the hangar bay, and as soon as the doors closed behind Phasma's cape it was like a wind blew through the huge space. Nervous laughter followed, and they began filtering out through side doors in pairs and small groups, but they walked lightly, scouting ahead to make sure they didn't encounter the party of murderers heading for guest housing.

She walked for a while with a few officers she liked. It had been necessary to make friends while rising through the ranks, and she'd already resolved to plead the case of these particular officers when she finally found cause to break cover and head for the Resistance. They were good at their core, she felt, and ought not be punished for being born into the First Order's regime. They waved amiable goodbyes when she ducked toward a refresher, promised to meet her in the officer's mess later. She smiled and stepped into one of the private stalls, unbuttoning her uniform jacket and pulling out her transmitter ring, feeling quite sorry to decieve the closest things to friends she had here.

But she had to do it; she made her report, her voice steady and her recall perfect, as usual. She was here for a reason, and she would see it through no matter what she had to do.

It was when she stepped out of the 'fresher that she felt it, a rolling chill that made her swallow hard and draw back in quickly. She'd kept her Force-presence compact and now she was glad; apparently the 'fresher was on the way to somewhere the Knights needed to be, and she snapped to attention as they approached. Hux was first, his greatcoat hiding the tension in his shoulders that she didn't need the Force to see.

As the Knights came level with her she focused on a spot on the corridor wall opposite, acting like any petrified officer might when faced with a bunch of Force-sensitive murderers. They'd almost passed her by, almost continued on their way, when the last one of the bunch paused.

“Wait,” he—she? the vocoder made their gender indeterminate, and their black robes and armor hid the shape of their body—called. The whole column stopped, and all six of the Knights of Ren stopped and focused in on her.

She'd never have a better test, she thought. Not even having Kylo Ren swooping above her shoulders on the bridge had been as much of a challenge. She thought _small_ again, and raised her gaze to the mirrored eye-slit of the Knight. They came closer, their head cocked just a bit, leaning in to examine her.

“Rank and name,” they said. The vocoder flattened out their voice but didn't mask the sibilant way it was said. It made the place between her shoulder blades itch.

“Lieutenant Commander Shada Jannus,” she replied.

“Assignment.”

“Signal intelligence officer on the bridge.”

She remained still as the Knight leaned in to bare inches. Had their face been uncovered she'd have thought the Knight was sniffing her or some such nonsense, but this seemed a closer kind of scrutiny. Carefully, she allowed a visible shudder.

This seemed to satisfy whatever the Knight was looking for, and they leaned back. “We will see more of you, then,” they said, and continued.

She didn't realize her hands had clenched into fists until she got back to her quarters, her knuckles aching with strain when she uncurled one to punch her door control for access.

_If they're involved,_ she thought, _We don't have much time._

*

Rey woke in stages, slow. Her whole body throbbed in time with her heart, and as she stretched the throb intensified, becoming centered low in her belly and making her smile.

She heard Poe groan from where his face was nestled between her breasts, and she stroked his hair until he settled back down. She kept her fingers in his coarse curls even afterward, remembering pushing his dark, sweat-damp hair out of his eyes as he'd knelt between Finn's legs. He'd watched them both, Finn with his long lashes fluttering in pleasure and Rey with her chin propped on Finn's shoulder, her hands searching out the places on his torso she somehow knew he'd respond to, and somehow knowing Poe was watching was just as thrilling for her as watching him with Finn... which she'd enjoyed _greatly._

Lost in the echoes of the night before, she drifted back to sleep. Their block of quarters was quiet, and even Ren had subsided in her head. There was some... shift, there. But she was too comfortable to investigate further, and if he had found some kind of peace for a time she would rather let him be. 

Eventually Finn woke up, humming and re-lacing his fingers with hers. His lips brushed her ear, making her shiver. She tilted her chin up and back and kissed him, enjoying the taste and feel of his full lips.

“Morning,” he said. Rey kissed him lazily once more.

“Morning.”

Their movements had woken Poe, and the sight of him looking up at her through his eyelashes, a sleepy grin on his face and his mind full of hazy memories, made her groan and lean forward to kiss him too. Sandwiched between the two of them, she felt safe, wanted, loved, all the pain of the day before a lifetime away. She could still taste herself on his tongue, and something else she thought was Finn, and below that Poe's own particular flavor; the way Poe's fingertips dug into her hip just a little made Rey think perhaps he was experiencing the same thing. The pleasure in her belly swooped round again and she squirmed in Finn's lap, which made him groan and slide his hands up to cup her breasts as Poe slipped down.

Later, they finally untangled and set about assuring those who had frantically commed earlier that they would be around soon, after cleaning up. Water was too much of a luxury on the base to spend on things like showers, but even in the sonic shower, the act of cleaning each other seemed to take on new meaning. Rey found she loved the difference in texture between Finn's skin and Poe's, how it felt under hands and lips and when she pressed herself against them. It wasn't meant to arouse, just to experience. Both of the men seemed equally fascinated, both with her and with each other, and it was with great reluctance that they parted to dress and try to set the room to rights.

“So, uh,” Finn said, folding up one of the blankets and laying it back on the bed. “We gonna talk about what happened last night? And this morning?”

“Sure, we can talk about it.” Poe pushed another blanket into his laundry crate and made a show of putting his hand to his back. “We're gonna need to ask for couples' quarters. Bigger bed, much more comfortable than the floor.”

“A bed would be more comfortable,” Rey agreed, giving Finn a sly look. She could feel his sudden shyness like a sun on her skin, and leaned over to kiss his cheek. “All I know for certain is that I'd like to do it again, if you two want to. Do it again.”

“I do,” Finn replied, almost before she'd finished speaking. “I do want to. It was... incredible.”

They both turned to look at Poe, who spread his hands. “What do you think I'm gonna do, leave you guys? Not a chance.”

He wrapped an arm around Rey's waist, and Finn put both of his arms around them, radiating happiness, and Rey closed her eyes and basked in it, let it wash over her heart-wounds until the pain had slackened enough for her to think properly about what she had to do. “I'm glad,” she mumbled, face pressed into Finn's throat again. 

She felt... changed, somehow. At breakfast, with her thigh pressed against Finn's and Poe's booted feet sliding forward to rest between theirs, she felt a calm power filling her, welling up from deep in her chest. She leaned her shoulder against Finn's and hooked one of Poe's ankles with her foot and smiled into her food as they both told her to slow down, not to bolt her food or else she'd make herself sick like _that one time..._

Finn said he had something he wanted to go do alone and Poe had sentry duty, so Rey lingered in the mess long after she'd finished her food. She didn't feel quite ready to talk to Luke – to her _father_ , or whatever – but there was something else she felt she had to do.

“We heard him talking to himself last night,” one of the guards said. “Just... be careful. Keeping him locked up like this has probably made him _really_ go 'round the bend.”

They opened the door and she stepped in.

The room was still dark, still cool. There was almost no sign of the madness of a few days before, save for the telltale scrapes on the wall. Everything else had been cleared away, cleaned up, replaced. It didn't seem right to her, but it was what it was. Her focus was elsewhere.

_He_ was sitting on the bed, his posture small to match how he felt in her mind. That seemed wrong, too; Kylo Ren was such a huge presence, physically and in the Force, that to feel him so _small_ seemed backwards to Rey. Family or not, she thought nobody ought to feel that way.

“Are you all right?” Her voice seemed too loud. Had this been anyone else Rey might have gone to them, put a hand on their back. Even though she wanted to, she didn't.

He lifted his head, eying her warily, a thread of surprise winding outward from the tightly compacted ball of his presence when he replied. “You actually care.”

“Why else would I bother asking? You haven't been your usual self, wreaking havoc in my mind. I thought I'd better look in to make sure you hadn't died.”

Ren was silent, and though it was very slight, he did relax a bit in body and mind. “And you've been unusually large,” he replied after a moment. “I assume it has something to do with that traitorous stormtrooper.”

“ _Finn_ ,” Rey told him firmly, “Is a loyal member of the Resistance. And it's none of your business what I did with him.”

“I already knew you did. You're utterly abysmal at shielding.”

She'd have pointed out the absurdity of him pointing this out to her when he was far worse about it, but she could sense that his words didn't have any teeth to them, that he was too... _tired_ to bite and mean it. “So?” she pressed. “ _Are_ you all right, or are you just going to make jabs about my life?”

“What do _you_ think?”

“I think I'd like a straight answer out of you for once.”

Ren stared at her for a long time. Used to this, Rey stared right back, holding her ground. Compassion, she told herself, did not mean rolling over.

“I don't know,” he said at last, looking away from her. She reached out to probe, testing the veracity of his statement. When she did, she caught a flash of herself again – it must have been how he saw her. Above him, looking down, crowned with a blindingly bright light as she reached out a hand—

“That's not me,” she blurted out. “That... that isn't who I am, _what_ I am.”

A muscle in his cheek jumped. “Maybe you just don't know who you are. Like me.”

“Maybe,” she murmured, after a pause. “But at least I know what I'm not. I'm not some... I don't know. Some _myth_ , some _angel._ I'm just Rey.” Amusement echoed back to her and she crossed her arms. “I know this.”

“How do you know?”

Rey opened her mouth, hesitated, closed it again. “It feels right, I suppose. But... that wasn't what you were asking about, was it?” When Ren didn't answer her, she nodded. “I thought so.”

“Are you reading my thoughts, now?”

“You're utterly abysmal at speaking them out loud.”

He looked at her then, and there was something odd about his face. It was, she realized, that the corner of his mouth had lifted up. Just a bit, just enough to dimple the corner, but even that was enough to make her smile in return. In that moment, a piece of her heart loosened, and she did reach out this time, stepping forward just enough to rest her fingertips on his shoulder, then her whole palm when he tensed but didn't flinch away.

“I can't answer your question,” she told him, after they'd stood there for a few moments, letting their thoughts drift. He was still small, guarded, closed off... but there were cracks, and they were growing wider.

“I didn't expect you to.” She felt pressure against her hand as Ren leaned, ever so slightly, into this point of contact. “I don't like this.”

“It's not easy, having your whole world upended. But you aren't alone.”

It was strange, to feel the echo of what had just happened to her. Some place deep inside Ren had loosened too, one of the cracks had widened enough to let the light in. She felt him draw in a deep breath, and let her hand slide off.

“So does that answer your question?” he asked, looking up.

“I think it does. Do you want me to—“ Rey hesitated, studying him, but not just his face. “No. When you're ready, then.”

“When I'm ready.”

She turned to go, to let Ren think more (she could almost hear him shifting back in her head, regaining himself a little), then paused.

“I may not have the way of shielding just yet, but if you... _listen in_ again, it won't go well for you.”

*

Hux hated this.

The Knights had made themselves at home on the _Finalizer_ , and they were not pleased by the fact that Hux hadn't moved the ship away from where the First Order's fleet was massing. Intelligence and analysis of the Resistance's behavior told him they weren't going anywhere so soon after moving bases, and so the First Order had time to _find_ the base and plan a well-thought-out strike that would be successful in retrieving the Ren that seemed to matter the most.

The Knights, naturally, had other ideas.

For example, right now two of them were hovering behind him on the bridge, unsatisfied with his answer that they didn't have sufficient intelligence, that they would waste valuable time and resources tracking hither and yon across the galaxy trying to use some mystical energy field to find one infuriating man. They had refused to listen to his well-reasoned plans, and now he was glad his greatcoat hid that he was clenching his fists behind his back.

“I will say it again: I will not order this ship away from the fleet now just so that you may follow some _feeling._ ”

“You defy Supreme Leader Snoke,” one Knight said. “Deliberately. We are not pleased.”

“I do no such thing. I merely seek to follow his orders as... _pragmatically_ as possible, with a minimum of waste.”

“Finding our master is not a waste,” the second Knight told him.

“You don't think it is either,” the first one added.

_I believe dealing with one Kylo Ren is far better than dealing with you lot,_ he thought irritably. _At least he was suitably focused when given a directive._

To them he said, “I have a duty to the fleet. I am its commander, as Kylo Ren is your commander. When your own excursions return with sufficient evidence then I will direct the fleet to aid you in retrieving Kylo Ren as you require, but I will not send this ship and all its crew haring off on some mad bantha chase.”

“The Supreme Leader will hear of your unwillingness,” the first Knight told him.

“He'll be most displeased that you refuse to listen to our orders.”

“I am _trying_ to follow his orders to aid you in the way I know best, which is to provide counsel and a base of operations for your scouting, but I will _not_ extend that to poorly-planned missions that amount to suicide runs.”

It came without warning. The first Knight reached up a hand and suddenly it was as though a cord had been drawn tight around his throat. Panic came first, the need to claw and scrabble at his throat, the need for _air_ denied him. He felt his face going hot as the second Knight closed the distance between them, heedless of Hux gasping, choking, mouth gaping like some kind of aquatic creature flopped onto the shore. Hux could see himself reflected in the Knight's mask, and had he not been _actually_ dying, appearing to choke while there was nothing around his neck and not a hand on him besides his own would have been comical.

“You will order the helm to obey our commands as well as yours,” the Knight said in their low, hissing voice. “You will leave the fleet and allow us to use the _Finalizer_ to search for our master. Kylo Ren needs us, he is in _distress_ , and we will bring all force to assist him.”

The pressure on his throat lessened enough for Hux to choke out an assent (as if he had any other choice, he wanted to _live_ ) and then it was back.

“If you ever deny us what we need again,” the first Knight growled.

“We will paint the hull of this ship red with your blood and the blood of all who stand with you,” the second Knight finished.

Then the pressure was gone, and Hux's breath made a whooping noise as he drew it back in through his abused neck, one hand going to the collar of his coat as he stared at the Knights in mingled horror and rage.

_How dare you,_ he thought. And, more quietly, _How dare_ he _let you do this to one of his own generals._

The Knights went to give the helm their commands, and Hux gripped the edge of a console hard, forcing his body to control itself for now. He could have himself tended to later, when his shift ostensibly ended. But it wouldn't do for the crew to see their General indisposed.

“Are you all right, sir?” one of the officers – the signal intelligence officer, he remembered her from the day the Knights arrived – asked him in a low voice.

“Mind your post, Lieutenant,” he rasped. Speaking hurt. “I'll be in my ready room.”

There, at least, he could have a modicum of privacy while he did some perfunctory examinations of his throat. Not a full retreat, but a tactical one.

*

Rey wandered round the perimeter of the base after leaving Ren to his thoughts. She tried to meditate, sitting under a stunted tree in a little hollow ringed by huge boulders, but found her mind too unsettled to free itself of her body. She thought about getting her staff and hitting things with it until she felt less rattled, but doing that would mean going into the base, and she felt brittle enough that if anyone touched her she might fly apart into pieces. Whether or not she was just picking up on Ren's mood she didn't know, but it was unpleasant either way.

Ryloth had vast, wasted expanses, steep cliffs hiding washes and deep canyons where no water had ever flowed. Long ago during the time of the Clone Wars, she knew a battle had been fought here, and on her walk she encountered pieces of things... armor not unlike stormtrooper armor, scraps of rusted metal she wouldn't have even gotten a quarter portion for. She picked up a few pieces for later inspection but mostly kept to the climbing, finding the physical activity far more centering.

She didn't attempt the cliffs – the ones close by all looked too sheer to free-climb – but there were plenty of huge boulders. Some were the size of ships, and she ended up scrambling to the top of one to look over the hollow where the base was nestled. Her eyes tracked first to the _Falcon_ , where Chewie was working once again on the motivator, to the secluded area where Ren's cell module abutted a cliff, to the living quarters where if she concentrated she could sense Poe. Thinking of him, of his dark curls and darker eyes looking up at her from between her thighs, made her whole body throb. Thinking of the way Finn's hand had slid over her body too, helping spread her open for Poe's mouth even as his other arm cradled her when her orgasm shook her, that made her—

“Rey?”

She shuddered out of the daydream and hurriedly schooled her thoughts into some semblance of order. Luke – her father – no, _Luke_ was climbing up from the tumbled boulders below her perch.

“Can I come up?” he asked. She hesitated, not really wanting to speak to him right now, but knowing it was inevitable.

“Of course.”

He made it the rest of the way and settled beside her, his loose tunic waving a bit in the breeze. They sat in silence for a long time, staring out over the hive of activity that was the Resistance base, before she felt Luke preparing to speak.

“We _really_ need to teach you how to shield your thoughts,” was _not_ what she'd expected him to say, and went red to the tips of her ears.

“Am I really that bad?”

“It's... understandable. And you aren't that bad, but, well... I'd rather not experience it.”

Rey looked anywhere else, and Luke laughed beside her, but then he went quiet.

“I didn't come here for that, though. I came here to apologize.”

She swiveled to look at him, brows knit together. “Apologize?”

“For not telling you. I should have told you the moment we met on Ahch-to, I should never have kept this from you. I was, I was afraid that you'd be mad—“

“I _am_.”

“And you have every right. It's my fault, and I want you to know that.”

“Did you decide to leave me on Jakku?”

Luke closed his eyes. “Yes. When you were nearly killed, my heart stopped for a minute, and your mother was even worse. We wanted to keep you safe, Rey, that's all we wanted to do.”

“Which you did by _abandoning_ me.”

“We hadn't meant... _I_ hadn't wanted to have it be so long. I had hoped that what had happened would be resolved, but then it wasn't, and then your mother left, and I... it all broke me, Rey. I didn't have a whole heart to give you, and I couldn't save my nephew, and my sister and Han had left each other, and... I couldn't bring myself to face you like that. So I retreated.”

“Because that was better than facing your problems.”

“I thought it was. I was wrong. So I'm sorry, Rey. When you were born I wanted to give you the galaxy, and instead I failed you in every way a father can fail their child.” 

They were both silent after that. Rey tucked her knees up and rested her chin on them, and Luke sagged a little, and the weight of their interrupted history rested on their shoulders.

She turned all she had learned around and around in her mind, the press of Luke's sadness and regret heavy against her. She thought about what she'd seen in Ren's mind, what he'd shown her of that night. Phantom pain twanged up her back from a memory she couldn't recall herself, and she arched a bit, trying to relieve it. When one's child was in danger, it seemed logical that a parent would want to do anything to protect them. She might not have had parents around growing up, but she'd seen them with their families, read stories. The reasoning was certainly sound. Luke had shown her nothing but kindness, encouraged her when she hit walls in her training, pushed her when she needed it and praised her when she got even the smallest thing right. It wasn't absolution enough to erase what had been done entirely, but it was something.

“I forgive you,” she said at last, and suddenly she found herself wrapped in a tight embrace, and reached out, wrapping her arms as comfortably around her father's shoulders as she could. When he pulled away a bit, his cheeks wet, she continued. 

“I understand why you did what you did, but I'm still mad about it.”

“I know. I don't expect this to all be wiped clean.”

Rey had other words, but one question rose in her mind and she couldn't ignore it. “Why didn't you tell me?” 

The words _why didn't you tell me_ echoed strangely in her mind, and she realized that it was because she was picking it up from his mind. Luke took a few slow breaths before replying. “I was just glad to have you back in my life, and afraid of losing you. I'm ashamed to admit that part of me had given up hope of seeing you again, even though I knew you weren't dead. I didn't want to jeopardize that, selfishly, because I wanted so badly just to be around you.”

“I wish you'd just been honest.”

“I wish I had, too. I ought to know better.”

Rey didn't know what to say to that. It seemed right to lean over, though, bumping her shoulder against her father's.

“I'm glad you and Poe and Finn have each other, you know. The old Jedi, they had a lot of things wrong. Sometimes attachments are the things that make you do everything you can to protect the galaxy, because the people you love are in it. But... we're still going to teach you how to shield better.”

Rey snorted, and when she glanced over, Luke was smiling too. She'd seen that smile before. “When I was on the _Falcon_ ,” she said slowly, “Anakin Skywalker visited me.”

“Did he?” Luke's smile widened a little at that. “Your grandfather was the one who taught me, in a way, that having the kinds of bonds we do with the people we do isn't a bad thing. What did you two talk about?”

“About me. About Kylo Ren. We're supposed to work together to kill Snoke, but I don't know how to even begin to trust him enough for it.” She tucked her chin on her knees again. “He's so lost.”

“He's had the rug pulled out from under him too. It's a dangerous time for both of you in that regard, but – and you can tell this to him – trust what your heart tells you, even if you can't trust each other. I think the two of you together do have the ability to put an end to Snoke, but how you do it is something you'll have to work out.”

It was good, sensible advice, and Rey nodded, itching to ask the other question on her mind. 

“My mother... what was she like?”

Luke really did smile at that, and this time she knew she'd seen that smile before... on her own face, thinking about Poe and Finn. But his smile was tinged by sadness too. “Your mother is an _amazing_ woman, Rey. You remind me a lot of her, actually, in your determination. She doesn't let much stand in her way.”

“She's still alive?”

“As far as I know. She was _upset_ with me, leaving you on Jakku, and, well... I was too consumed by grief and remorse to really respond well to her. She left not long after, and I can't really blame her.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Every day,” Luke replied, and she felt his longing like an ache in her chest. “Her name is Mara. It was her idea to name you Rey, by the way – she called you her light. I hope one day you'll find each other and meet her. I know she'd love to see how you've grown.”

“I hope I meet her one day, too.” Rey tried to think about what it would be like to have a mother and a father, but when she thought _family_ she could still only see Poe and Finn. Luke was a shadowy figure in the back of this concept, and trying to add another, a woman she only barely knew anything about, was near impossible. “She didn't want to leave me.”

“Mara's... formidable. She was insistent that she'd be able to protect you if the First Order came back. Those were really, _really_ dark days, though, and I let my panic push me.” Luke shook his head. “But I can only move forward. That's all we can do.”

_The belonging you seek is not behind you,_ Maz Kanata had told her. Rey closed her eyes, reaching out into the Force.

_I just wish I knew what lies ahead of me._

*

Days passed and became a week, and when no attack occurred, the Resistance base began to settle into more normal operations. Finn was glad for it; Rey was still unsettled but had gone back to her usual daily routine of Jedi training and repairing things that needed it, and Poe wasn't on patrol for half of every rotation anymore. They moved into larger quarters, and spent a lot of their free time curled up together in the bed. He'd never felt happier.

Still, his mind whirled with the thought he might be a Jedi. He hadn't thought that the First Order would allow them to become stormtroopers, that he'd have been weeded out and killed... but he couldn't deny that he'd _felt_ Rey's distress. That must mean something.

“Are those the latest?” the General asked when he came to her work desk, in an alcove off the main command center, datacards and flimsiplasts from Intelligence neatly organized in his hands. 

“Uh, the officer asked me to show you this one specifically,” and he tapped a few buttons on a holoproj he'd already slipped one of the cards into. A small map of the sector of space Ryloth was in, as well as portions of surrounding sectors, glowed to life. “These are the latest reports we have on the position of the _Finalizer._ It's still in the Dalchon sector, but its movements don't have any pattern we can see. It seems to just be flying in circles.”

“That doesn't make sense.”

“You're telling me.”

“Has the Resistance sympathizer on board sent anything new?”

“Not since the last transmission, a few days ago. They did say that with the Knights on board it would be more difficult.”

Leia studied him. “Do you know anything about these Knights? I'd talk to my son about it, but Rey and Luke seem convinced he's had some breakthrough, and I don't... I want him to work through it.”

Finn hesitated. He'd only been near the Knights twice before – once while he was still training and they'd come to the facility he was at on some business, and once when Kylo Ren had been assigned to the _Finalizer_ and they'd accompanied him. He told the General as much, and she sighed.

“We don't know much about them either. We know they're Force-sensitive, steeped in darkness, but we don't know who they work with.”

“They don't work _with_ anyone, ma'am. From what I've heard, they're dangerous and just barely controlled. They listen to Snoke, to Kylo Ren, and to each other, in that order. General Hux loathes them and adores his command, so the fact that the _Finalizer_ is acting as it does tells me he probably isn't really in charge of the ship anymore.”

“Maybe we can use that.” The General pushed these new reports around her desk, and Finn could almost hear her mind working double-time. “Give it some thought?”

“I will, General, but... Hux is fanatically loyal to the Order.”

“There's a reason I asked you to take this position, Finn. You're smart, and you're able to think quickly under pressure. I'm glad you agreed to take it, and I wouldn't ask for your input if I didn't think you'd be capable of coming up with something.”

Finn didn't know how to respond to that, beyond saying, “The Resistance gave me a home when I didn't have one. I've got to repay you somehow.”

He had other tasks but they could be left for a while, so Finn wandered the base until he found Luke Skywalker. He'd been hesitant about this particular meeting for a variety of reasons, but his own research and thought had reached an impasse, and it was better to go to an expert than continue to flounder. Luke was working on an old-model X-Wing with Artoo, who beeped cheerily when Finn approached. He patted the droid's domed head.

“Skywalker?” he called. “Uh. Luke Skywalker?”

Luke's head popped up out of the cockpit. “Hello, Finn. How's it going?”

Belatedly Finn remembered he had awoken that morning to find Rey pressed against his side, her lips trailing from his jaw to his throat to his chest and lower, her hands already there, and that he'd looked her in the eyes as she—and she was Luke's _daughter_ —and lost momentum. Luke grinned at him as though he knew what Finn was thinking, which might not have been far from the truth.

“Can I help you with something?”

“Uh,” Finn mumbled, then got his feet again. “Can I ask you something, sir? It's Jedi-related.”

“Just Luke is fine, no need to 'sir' me. Ask away, I'll do my best to answer.”

He disappeared back into the guts of the X-Wing's cockpit, and Finn climbed the ladder, sitting on the metal platform just beside the fighter. “How do you know you're a Jedi?”

“Well, it's different for everyone. Some people, the Force awakens in them at a very young age and it's with them all their lives. Others, those who have no Force-sensitive family or those who have no reason to suspect they've got any kind of abilities, they might notice later on in life. I've encountered both, and I think you're familiar with how things went for Leia and me.” Luke emerged again, crossing his arms on the edge of the cockpit. “What else?”

“What... what does it _feel_ like? The Force?”

“Light,” Luke whispered. “Or a small voice in the stillness, guiding you. Everyone's relationship with the Force is intensely personal. Even Leia and I experience it in different ways, and we're twins.”

“Oh.” None of this was helping him sort out his question, and Luke set his tools down and came to sit on the ladder with Finn, leaning back against the hull of the starfighter. 

“Why do you ask?”

“I... is there a test, or something? Some way I could know if I'm... like you, like Rey?” _Or like Kylo Ren_ he thought. “I... feel things sometimes. Thoughts that aren't mine. Feelings. I just don't know what it feels like to be a Jedi.”

“It feels like never being alone again, with all the life in the galaxy as your companions. But I think I know what you're getting at.” Luke held out a hand, and after a moment Finn put his palm in it. Warmth and light grew in his mind, a gentle, calm presence, and he found he was smiling when he opened his eyes again. 

“Was that you?”

Luke was smiling too. “It was. The Force is with you, Finn,” he said, a statement that was both completely world-shattering and wholly natural.

“Can you teach me? Can you show me how to be a Jedi?”

It occurred to Finn that the last time Luke had more than one student it had not gone well, and that the reason for that destruction was currently in a cell module on the base. But Luke just smiled.

“I can, and I will,” he said. “I'll teach you the ways of the Force.”

*

Hux stood back from the main viewports on the bridge of the _Finalizer_ , watching as three of the Knights paced back and forth. The swirling mad vortex of hyperspace was all he could see, but the black-clothed specters across the bridge seemed to have other ideas.

“It's rather fascinating to watch them work, sir,” Phasma said as quietly as she could with her helmet mic. “One has an idea, and the rest follow it or deviate, and eventually they all seem to come to a kind of consensus. It's almost like a hive mind.”

Hux felt his lip curl. “That's horrifying.”

“I suppose for them it's efficient. Otherwise they'd be continually decimating their own group over some new squabble.”

Hux thought of his half-day spent in a bacta tank to repair his throat and let out the full sneer. “More's the pity, then—ah, what do you suppose they're doing now?”

The Knights had gathered in one spot and seemed to be... _listening_ , or at least, their heads were cocked like birds. As he watched, the doors slid open and two more Knights came in, adopting the same posture as soon as they reached their brethren.

“I have no idea,” Phasma muttered.

Soon all six Knights were gathered on the bridge, _listening_. Eventually one of them split off and gave the helm instructions. The _Finalizer_ slowed, dropped out of hyperspace, and vectored off toward a new destination.

“This is _intolerable_ ,” Hux grumbled, and stalked forward. “May I ask where my ship is going now?”

The Knight studied him for a long time, until Hux had to clench his fists to keep from fidgeting or worse, shrinking away. His father would never have tolerated such behavior, and Hux wouldn't allow it in himself. Whatever reaction the Knight was hoping for, Hux refused to give it to them.

“We have found our Master,” the Knight said. “Ryloth. Kylo Ren is on Ryloth.”

Well, _that_ was good news. With Kylo Ren back on board, this lot would leave and he could restore some semblance of order. “I'll call the fleet—“

“That will not be necessary.” The Knights had gathered around him now, and Hux had to call upon all his self-control not to let his fear show. 

“It's unwise to go into this with only one ship—the _Finalizer_ is a fine ship, to be sure, the best of the fleet, but she is only one—“

“We are all you need.”

The Knights left as a group, already beginning to work themselves up for the impending fight with a series of pushes and half-finished sentences, and Hux felt rage replace fear. 

_They're going to get us all killed,_ he thought, and strode back to Phasma. “Prepare two divisions for a ground assault,” he ordered quietly. “And make sure they stay well clear of the Knights once readied. I'm close to being rid of them, and I'd hate to jeopardize that.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back after a break week - I moved, it was crazy, but I'm settled in now and it's AMAZING. 
> 
> Anyway, here's the next chapter! A bit shorter than usual, but I think it'll end on a good note... enjoy!

She felt it before her commlink beeped, interrupting the meditation session she'd joined Luke and Finn for. Not just the sense of a stormcloud growing on the horizon, but the sudden alarm from those on base. Beside her Finn was alert too, and Luke had opened his eyes by the time she answered.

“This is Rey.”

“ _Rey, it's Poe. Finn's with you and Master Skywalker?_ ”

“Yes, what's going on?”

“ _It's the First Order. They've found us, they'll be here in a matter of hours. There's a transmission the General wants you and Finn to hear._ ”

They jogged back to find the base in a state of organized chaos. Poe was with his pilots, directing them to their ships and shouting encouragement. He paused long enough to flash them a grin and a thumbs-up, BB-8 rolling around after him. Rey reached out to soothe the worry from his mind, sharpen his focus, and continued on into the base.

The General was standing by the big holoprojector in the middle of the command center, currently displaying Ryloth and their base's position. A countdown clock hovered off to one side, presumably displaying the time left until the First Order's fleet reached them. She gestured them over without looking away.

“We got a transmission from our source inside the Order,” she said tersely. “Threepio?”

“At once, General.” The droid pressed a few buttons, and a crackling, distorted voice played. Even so, Rey could hear the distress in their informant's voice.

“ _Knights located Kylo Ren. Hyperspace jump estimated three hours, forty-three minutes in total. Finalizer solo. Evacuate if possible._ ”

The transmission ended, and General Organa looked round the projection at those gathered. “I've ordered Commander Dameron to lead our fighters in defense, but against a ship like the _Finalizer_ , they won't have much of a chance if they can't take care of the weaponry on the ship quickly enough.”

“Is it really just the _Finalizer_?”

“It seems you were right, Finn. General Hux can't be in control of his own ship... I don't know him, but I knew his father, and from what I've heard the son inherited a lot in terms of his tactical ability.” A very unpleasant expression crossed her face momentarily, but smoothed out when she continued. “We got this message forty-five minutes ago, and the source didn't say how long they'd been in hyperspace at that point. Nightfall is in two hours, so we have until then to prepare anything outside. No floodlights, bring in all materiel, we go dark outside in one hour. Dismissed – but Rey, Finn...”

The three of them clustered together, speaking in low voices so nobody else could hear. “Rey, I know we didn't want to push him,” the General said, “But it might be time to ask my son what he knows.”

Rey swallowed – she'd been content to check in on Kylo Ren every other day or whenever she felt his emotions spike, pulling her out of training or a sound sleep. He seemed to be caught up in his own thoughts most of the time, and she'd thought to give him time to work them out for himself. But they'd run out of time. “About the Knights of Ren.”

“We know he was their leader. Anything he can tell us, anything at all...”

“Ma'am,” Finn began slowly. “How can we trust anything he says?”

“I think Rey will know if he's lying or not.”

So off they went, Finn at her heels as she wove through crowds of beings on the way to Ren's cell. On the way she thought about warning Finn, about asking him to hang back, but stubbornly discarded the idea. When they were standing outside the door, she only hesitated a moment before thumbing in her code and stepping inside.

He was sitting on his bed again, though not as hunched as a week ago, and he only stiffened a bit more when he saw Finn enter behind her. “What is _he_ doing here?”

“Listening.” Rey felt a curl of some strange emotion in her stomach, but it wasn't hers. It made her sick to her stomach, and she pushed back against it until he either calmed down or locked it away enough for her to continue. “The _Finalizer_ is going to be here in less than two hours, and the Knights of Ren are on board. We need to know what you know.”

“Because that worked out so well the last time.”

“Only because you gave us a trapped code,” Finn muttered. The curl of sickening emotion was back, and this time Rey pushed back harder.

“Don't,” she told Ren. “I don't know what—are you _jealous?_ ”

“Of course not,” he snapped, but drew back without as much fuss this time. “What do you want to know? I'm afraid I never memorized the specifications of the _Finalizer_ well enough to rattle them off to you.”

“The Knights of Ren, their strengths, their weaknesses. That's what we'd like to know.”

Kylo eyed Finn a moment, and Rey did not trust the grin that grew across his scarred face at all. “One of them – Tevin Ren, I believe – likes to collect heads as trophies. Ylsa, I've seen her rip out an opponent's vocal cords with her bare hands and speak through it. She thinks it's still funny...”

“Was it ever funny to begin with?” Finn muttered. He sounded as horrified as Rey felt. Ren aimed a very toothy grin at him.

“Only the first time.”

“I know what you're doing.” Rey crossed her arms. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?” He met Rey's glare steadily, spreading his hands. “Stop _what_?”

Rey rolled her eyes. “I can tell you have no real love for them.”

“The Knights? Of course not. I may be their master but that doesn't mean I particularly like any of them.” He looked at Rey for a moment longer, then sighed. “What is it that you already know?”

“They're dangerous, unstable,” Finn began. Ren snorted.

“ _That's_ an understatement.”

“They listen to Snoke, you, and the Force, and that's it.”

“True.”

“How do we stop them?”

“Honestly?”

“We'd prefer that.” Rey watched him, watched as he took a breath before answering, and knew that whatever he said would be true.

“They're all...” he stopped, wet his lips, started again. “Their minds are gone. That's where the violent instability comes from. They were all Force-sensitives, ones with latent ability that hadn't awoken before Snoke found them, and when he did he broke them, systematically. Sometimes I helped.”

He said it nonchalantly, but Rey felt something quease deep down in his psyche, some horror he'd repressed at the whole business accompanying one of the more disturbing memories she'd encountered from him. She reached out automatically, brushing it away, but he held up a hand.

“No,” he said. “I've done it.” After a moment of thinking, Ren nodded to himself. “Get them by themselves. Don't try to take them on as a group. Isolated, they're not as powerful. Together they can feed off each other's abilities, their minds are linked so closely. But it would be better for you to stop their shuttle before they get to the ground.”

Finn glanced at Rey. “Is he...?”

“Yes.”

“Then I'll go let the General know.” He turned and left, but paused in the doorway to look back at Ren.

“Thank you,” he said, and then he was gone. Kylo let out a breath when he thought Rey wasn't looking, and she turned back to him, reaching out to place her hand on his shoulder again, as before. The contact had seemed to calm him before, and she felt the panic subside. After a few minutes, she let her hand slide off and stepped away.

“Good luck,” he said, a wry twist to his mouth. “Try not to let them talk.”

“I can't imagine they'd say anything I'd want to hear anyway.”

*

Poe had the squadrons form up in orbit around one of Ryloth's moons. There was one likely approach vector for a ship the size of the _Finalizer_ , and from their position they could swoop out from behind the moon and flank them. It wasn't much, and the surprise would be gone the moment they broke cover, but it would buy them a precious few seconds. Now they could only wait. 

Sitting in his cockpit, BB-8 checking and rechecking scan data from the ground link, Poe closed his eyes. His thoughts were with two people down on the planet, two people he would give anything to protect. 

“ _Long-range sensors are detecting an inbound ship,_ ” Snap told him over the comm. Poe sat up, tightened his grip on the stick.

“ETA?”

“ _Two minutes._ ”

He relayed this information to Control.

“ _Understood,” Control replied. “Remember to target weapon placements and shield generators, those should be your primary targets. Disable the ship if possible. And Finn says that if you see a shuttle leaving the Finalizer, you should make sure it doesn't make planetside._ ”

“Copy that, Control.”

“ _May the Force be with you._ ”

“May the Force be with you, too.” Poe gripped the stick, his mind already narrowing down its focus. 

*

The _Finalizer_ dropped out of hyperspace above the ecliptic and immediately fired her sublights and maneuvering thrusters, making for Ryloth. Standing on the bridge and watching their approach, Hux made a mental list of all the things he would have done differently in this and resigned himself to watching his ship be mishandled on the orders of a passel of thugs.

He saw them almost at the same time one of the officers called out, “Inbound, General! Two squadrons of X-Wings, coming in at ten o'clock!”

He narrowed his eyes. The leader was barely visible against the starfield, the starfighter's hull painted black. _Dameron,_ he thought, and wished that Ren had been able to finish the job when they'd had him on board. “Dispatch two squadrons of our own,” he instructed. “And a third to cover the approach of the Knights' shuttle when they depart.”

“As ordered, sir.”

When they passed the orbit of the outermost moon, he watched as an _Upsilon_ -class shuttle shot out from one of the hangar bays, its broad wings lowering into flight position. Behind and beside it, TIEs screamed out into the space above Ryloth.

“Good hunting, you mad fools,” he muttered.

*

Rey and Finn had been given permission to be at the central holoprojector, and now they stood beside General Organa as the display shifted, showing the position of the _Finalizer,_ the calculated approach of the shuttle, and the shifting dots marking the positions of starfighters on both sides.

Poe's was orange, standing out against the bright greens of the others. Rey tracked it, her fingers gripping the edge of the projector hard unil Finn reached over and took one of her hands in his. 

“He'll be fine. He's the best damn pilot in the Resistance.” Finn sounded as sure as he felt. She smiled tightly at him and laced their fingers, glad for his confidence.

“There he goes,” one of the others said, and she turned to see the blinking cursor of Poe's X-Wing break off from the main fight and follow the shuttle, two more (“Snap” and “Testor”) flying in wing positions with him. “That shuttle's really moving, I hope...”

“He'll stop them,” Rey said. “He has to.”

*

He felt them coming.

Alone in his cell he sat up, a strange numbness sweeping through his body like a wave. The void, that place that had been quiescent for days, suddenly yawned wide again.

“They're here,” he whispered, staring at the ceiling.

*

Poe didn't have to look or use his comm to know that Snap and Testor were tight on his wings; they'd been with him since the beginning, and they were the two pilots he trusted the most in any squadron. When he banked off from the dogfight that had begun between the _Finalizer's_ TIEs and their X-Wings, Testor and Snap had come with him in hot pursuit of the shuttle that was inside the orbit of the nearest moon now.

“ _First Order shuttle, this is Ryloth Ground,_ ” he heard ground control say. Not theirs – the actual planetary control, though it was full of Resistance sympathizers, many of whom had lost people in the Hosnian system. “ _You are not welcome here. Turn around, go back to your ship, and leave with your starfighters._ ”

There was a pause, and then a low, hissing, throbbing voice came over the comms, one so close to what he'd heard in that room, on that chair, that Poe felt a chill creep down his spine. “ _Hand over Kylo Ren, and we will leave without incident. Bar our passage, and we will destroy your planet._ ”

A ridiculous threat – an _Upsilon_ -class didn't have the firepower, not even the _Finalizer_ did – but fear that had risen in Poe's throat screamed at him to obey, to tell them to turn Ren over and get him out of their hair and their lives, get him as far away as possible.

“ _Black Leader?_ ”

It was a private comm channel from Testor. Poe took a breath, reminded himself who he was, that he'd never be back in that chair facing that mask again, and clicked his comm twice to acknowledge he was okay. He really wasn't, but... he was trying to be.

“Maybe they'll come to their senses if they see what they're up against,” he said, and dove in. This class of shuttle had deflector shields, he knew, but if they were good with their shots...

The familiar _thud-thud_ of his laser canons vibrated through the stick when he fired, and the other two pilots followed his lead moments later. Their first few shots glanced off the deflector shields, but a lucky hit by Testor resulted in a shower of sparks from the rear of one of the lower wings, and BB-8 warbled a damage analysis.

“One rear deflector array down!” he said. “Good shot, Testor. Keep it up!”

The X-Wings swooped and wove around the shuttle, and as nimble as it was, a command shuttle was no match for a starfighter. They flew circles, picking away at the shuttle's defenses even as the red-hot flames of atmospheric entry began to lick at their viewports.

“ _You won't stop us, Resistance scum,_ ” said a voice over the comm, and Poe froze for an instant at the metallic, mechanical vocoder voice. He came back to himself right away, but that half-second hesitation over a shot that would have taken out their engines was enough time for the shuttle to put on a burst of speed and get ahead of them, dropping down over Ryloth.

“Pick up visuals,” he said, angry at himself for giving in again. “Our tracking and sensors won't be as good this close to the ground. But you both know what to do in atmo.”

“ _Try not to hit our own ships,_ ” Snap muttered. Poe grinned and accelerated, despite the difficult terrain they were coming up on. His laser cannon shots mostly missed, but all three of them were getting in at least glancing blows, and that was better than nothing. 

They'd been followed down by TIEs, though, and when they were a few kliks out from the base they had to peel off and take care of _those_ , and by the time the base whizzed by underneath them, he could see that the shuttle had landed and that black-clothed figures were emerging from it, using the lights of the shuttle to render the darkened base brilliantly lit.

Poe tapped his comm for a private channel. “Finn, Rey,” he said, “They're on the ground. Be _careful._ ”

*

“They're on the ground, sir.”

“Signal the good captain to take her divisions down.” Hux had retreated to the back of the bridge, letting the Knights remaining on board pace in front of the transparisteel at the front. There were only two left; the others had gone, hopefully to die or be captured and never darken Hux's doorstep again.

“All her transmissions will be directed to your commlink, sir,” he heard as he dug out an earpiece and fitted it in.

*

“We will,” Rey said. “Fly well, Poe Dameron.”

She rested her fingertips on her lightsaber, then thought better of it and slung her staff off her shoulder instead. “Let's go.”

The Knights were like... her mind conjured up images of the sinking fields back on Jakku, sands so loose and soft that they sucked in anything that wasn't mindful crossing them. The Knights' presences in the Force were like that, treacherous dark pits that threatened to pull her in. She could see on Finn's face that he was resisting too, and a thin sheen of sweat gleamed on his skin when they encountered the first Knight.

This one was shorter even than Rey, but powerful – she could feel it, rolling off the Knight and washing over her in chilly swells. The Knight was masked, but the weight of their gaze was almost tangible.

“The scavenger,” the Knight hissed, a cool, female voice. Rey wondered if this was Ylsa Ren. “And the traitor. What a pair. We are amused by you, but our orders are clear.”

She had no lightsaber, but the vibroblade she brought out was wickedly curved and hummed with unstable energy, and when she swung and only narrowly missed Rey – slicing through the air between Rey and Finn – static crackled against her skin, matching the static in her mind, like so many minds pressing in against her. With a yell, Rey struck out with her staff, meeting the Knight's vibroblade. The Knight radiated glee, up until Rey's foot connected with her stomach. There was a harsh wheezing sound as the Knight lost her breath, and then a metallic clang as Rey freed her staff and swung it, striking the Knight in the front of her mask. 

“That was easy,” she said, looking back at Finn, when she was thrown against the side of one of the module arrays.

Finn was firing, the Knight was shouting something unintelligible, and Rey's head was spinning as she picked herself up, gripping her staff tightly.

_Spoke too soon,_ she thought, and dove back in, her staff spinning through the air, clashing against the vibroblade's edge and sliding off, leaving a deep gouge along the metal. They struck again, and this time the Knight leaned in, their gridlike helmet so dark it appeared to suck in light. 

“We've sensed you,” they said, and now Rey could _smell_ them, a singular kind of ozone tang. The static in her mind spiked. “You're the one in his mind, the light.”

A faint and sinister image filled her mind, one of Rey exploding into darkly glowing motes of dust, but Rey ground her teeth and pushed back against it. “Then you know who I am,” she snarled, and brought her foot up, kicking the Knight in the knee. They howled in pain, and she brought out her lightsaber, the blue-white blade's hum a comfort to her.

“We know that you will never take him from us!” The Knight jabbed with their vibroblade, but Rey spun and the weapon passed behind her as she twisted, her lightsaber slicing through the air and catching the Knight across their chest. With a cry – one that seemed oddly echoed in her mind by other voices – they went down, and after a moment, Rey shut off her lightsaber and Finn lowered his blaster. 

“They'll be going after _him_ ,” Finn said.

Rey shook her head to clear it. “Then we have to make sure they don't get him.”

*

The sound of tearing metal and cracking plasteel woke him from the uneasy meditation he'd been attempting. The Knights' approach had been the coming of a wild storm, and now it was upon him. Now, unsettled, he had been found by two. He stood in the middle of his little cell, watching them.

“Master,” one of them said, kneeling – Palo Ren, one he'd had a personal hand in _integrating_ , as Snoke had called it. “Master, we've found you.”

“We've come for you.” The other Knight, Vis, dropped to her knees too, and their combined relief and adoration threatened to undo him. They _needed_ him to be their leader, and he could not help responding to it. “We've come to bring you home.”

Outside the module, he saw the crumpled and bloodied bodies of the guards. Vis was probably responsible, he thought idly; Palo had always liked watching, taking more pleasure in feeling the loss of life in the Force. Once, he'd fooled himself into thinking the same thing. But it was Vis' use of the word _home_ that gave him pause, the idea that he _belonged_ with them, and the feeling that while that had been true before, it might not be anymore.

It would be easy, he thought, as Vis stretched out her hand to gesture him through the hole in the module ( _you never step ahead of your leader_ he remembered telling her when she'd joined the Knights, when he was younger, newer to his power and position with Snoke). _Easy_ to stand up and walk out and take up the mantle of Kylo Ren once more. It was familiar. He knew how to _be_ Kylo Ren. He wouldn't have to think about what he'd done, or how to fix it, or the way the visit from his grandfather's ghost – his _real_ grandfather's ghost – had shattered something in his heart.

_Just give in,_ a voice whispered to him out of the void, or from somewhere deeper in his own mind. _Stop trying to fight what you've become._

The words bubbled up in him, the acceptance of their invitation, but his throat closed around them and his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth, and it was in that instant that the _snap-hiss_ of a lightsaber made both the Knights spin, breaking the spell.

Rey's form was sloppy, and he could tell that she'd spent most of her time training in other aspects of her abilities, rather than in use of a saber. But then again, he wasn't much better off – he'd had to figure things out on his own, for Snoke had little desire to show him how to use a lightsaber, and the Knights preferred... other methods. He'd been insistent on having one, though. Vader had used a lightsaber, and so Kylo Ren must have one too. But Rey had grown up with a staff and her wits, and had actively not wanted to pursue this too much. While it showed, she was still precise and efficient in what she did even if how she did it was less than perfect. 

She'd surprised the Knights, her and the stormtrooper behind her, and Rey was able to immediately bring Vis to her knees with a quick jab. The stormtrooper finished her off with a clean shot to the chest. Palo, though, was able to get his weapon up in time and block Rey's attack, but that was when the _actual_ stormtroopers appeared.

“ _No!_ ” Palo snarled. He went after the troopers instead of the threats more immediately in front of him, and it was his undoing. The blue blade flicked out and back, and Palo dropped.

Rey glanced back at him and opened her mouth to say something, but then the stormtroopers were upon her and her attention shifted back to what she was doing. He had to admit, when she switched back to her staff, she was much better with it.

The fighting was heavy; the stormtroopers could see him inside and fought to get to him, but Rey and the stormtrooper fought them back, their minds utterly focused but entwined in some new way. He still felt like an interloper here, but this... this was a new path.

It happened quickly; Rey and this stormtrooper had been separated by the fighting, so when a blaster bolt struck the stormtrooper in the arm, spinning him on his heels and knocking him to the ground, she was too far away and too occupied in her own opponent to get close.

“Finn!” he heard her scream, and it tore at his mind, forced him to move forward, grabbing a blaster rifle from one of the dead stormtroopers and using it to shoot Finn's opponent off him. A few more well-placed shots took care of Rey's opponent and two oncoming troopers as well, and then they were alone.

Rey was staring at him, her eyes wide and her mind utterly thrown open in her surprised. The stormtrooper – Finn – was staring too, in disbelief. He lowered the blaster rifle to the ground slowly, and stepped back into the module.

“Thank you,” Rey whispered, radiating gratitude. Finn still wasn't speaking, but the disbelief had become surprise, which he took as a good thing.

“You're going to stay,” Finn said. “Despite the door not being a door?”

He shrugged. “I've got nowhere else to be.”

*

Phasma knew it was a loss almost from the moment her boots hit Ryloth's surface.

The stormtrooper transports were nearby – precisely placed, properly manned for their retreat, which she signaled without delay. One of the commanders commed her privately, indicating that he was taking the remaining three Knights on board their transport, that they were cut off from the shuttle they'd taken down and were being demanding, and she approved it and told the commander to be careful. Then she made a call of her own. 

“General,” she said, making sure that her helmet was broadcasting its live feed back to Hux's ready room. “I think you'd better prepare what you're going to say to the Surpreme Leader when he asks why we failed here.”

Even over the transmission, she could hear the tremor in Hux's voice. “ _They've failed, then?_ ”

“Magnificently. Expect returning troop transports starting in five minutes.”

“ _Be back on board within fifteen minutes and we will make the jump to lightspeed._ ”

“Oh, and you'd better write off their shuttle, too.”

She was glad that the helmet concealed her smirk when Hux swore colorfully. “ _This is a catastrophe,_ ” he growled. “ _Report in full when you return. I want as much information as possible before I go before the Surpreme Leader._ ”

*

_He did it._

_I always knew he would. It's the rest of you who had no faith in him._

_We didn't have much to go on, Anakin—_

_Luke didn't have much to go on either, but he still saved me._

_Many trials there are, ahead of him. Ahead of them both._

_They are my family. They will persevere._

*

When it was over, the Resistance leadership decided that it could have been worse.

Twenty-one personnel had been wounded and four killed, but given that several powerful Dark Side users had been set loose on the base, the body count could have been much higher. They had gained a First Order shuttle and all the information its computer contained, which the slicers were mining now, and their air assault had taken a sizable chunk out of the _Finalizer_ 's TIE complement while sustaining minimal losses themselves. The base was in high spirits, but Leia wasn't celebrating with them. Not that she didn't feel jubilant – just the opposite – but something else was on her mind, something Rey had told her breathlessly before Poe grabbed her hand and tugged her off to join the others in the mess. She'd watched as Poe had pulled Rey down into his lap, Finn pressed against his side.

That, she'd thought as she'd left the mess, was one good thing that had come out of all this. Their love was a palpable thing, new and already strong, and she knew that it would only grow.

But it was a different kind of love that drew her away, that led Luke to put a hand on her shoulder as she passed him, pressing love and care and concern into her, bolstering her will. She was strong in so many things, he'd said once, in one of their late-night talks. She could use his strength now.

They'd moved Ben to one of the unused living modules. It was more comfortable than the cell mod, had bigger windows and no lock on the door (yet), but the fact he was still there when she arrived hours after setting the base to rights was, she thought, a good sign. He was lying on the bed, and if she hadn't been so finely attuned to his presence she'd have thought he was asleep.

“Are you all right?” she asked quietly. Ben opened his eyes but didn't move, didn't even look at her.

“I wasn't hurt.” He paused, then turned his head, looking at her, and her heart caught, because there wasn't overt rage in his eyes. “I've gotten a new room out of the whole ordeal, so.”

“The important things.”

“Yes.”

Silence settled over the room as Leia sat in one of the chairs by the small table, unsure if she would be welcomed closer or not. When she caught a slight... _unraveling_ of the tension in his presence, she knew she'd made the right choice. “You saved Finn's life today. He feels he owes you a debt.”

“I—he doesn't. I don't want him in my debt.”

“Unfortunately, these kinds of things aren't really up to you.”

“A lot of my life hasn't been.” 

Leia had to stop, take a breath, control herself. His relaxed posture was at odds to the tension that had spiked in his presence again, and she was _not_ just going to be grateful that he was open to her at all. “I failed you,” she said simply. “I should have protected you, and I didn't, or couldn't. Every day, I struggle with the guilt of that and what it's brought to this galaxy, this _family_. So you'll have to excuse me if I take some small joy in the fact you acted in defense of someone else today.”

Ben had been opening his mouth to say something, but he snapped it shut and looked away, staring out the window at the glow of the floodlights. “I didn't do it for the stormtrooper,” he muttered.

“I don't care why you did it. You're a grown man, you can make your own decisions, and I'll have to trust them or be at peace with the fact I can't tell you not to make them. But I can be proud of you, and I can be glad, and I will be.” She sighed, resting her elbows on her knees. “I _am_ proud of you.”

“What if I...” his fingers toyed with the sheets where he thought she couldn't see. “What if I went back to the First Order?”

“Then I'd be sad. But it would be your choice. Is that what you want?”

“I don't know _what_ I want.”

A rejoinder was on the tip of her tongue, but Leia hesitated. “That's not true, I think.”

“Stop reading my mind.”

“I don't have to. I'm your mother, and no matter how far you go or what you do, that will never change.”

“I _killed him._ I killed your husband, my father, and you still—“

“What did I _just_ say?” Leia's heart thudded. “I will not excuse your actions, and only you can explain them to anyone, or yourself. But you will always be my son, and you will always have a piece of my heart with you, whether you want it or not. And I regret all the things I didn't do, Ben, all the things that happened.”

“So you'll just pretend it _never_ happened.”

“No. But I will try to understand, if you ever want to tell me. That'll be your choice.” She stood, and on impulse, went to stand closer. There was something of her in Ben's face, she could see, but there was so much of Han it hurt. But it was a good hurt; having him here, she could have something of her husband back with her. And when he looked up at her, his eyes dark and conflict plain in them, she wanted nothing more than to pull him to her and stroke his hair, like she had when she'd been the one to soothe his nightmares, and tell him it would all be okay, that he had nothing to fear. There was much fear in him.

“Just say goodbye this time, if you go.”

She stepped away and was at the door when she heard the bed move, heard him clear his throat.

“Wait, Gen—wait. Mother.”

Leia turned back to face her son, sitting up on the bed and looking anywhere else... then focusing on nothing _but_ her.

“What is it?”

“I... there's something I want to tell you. I want...” he hesitated, as though what he wanted to do was, possibly, the most difficult decision he'd ever made. Leia waited as Ben licked his lips uncertainly and drew in a steadying breath.

“I want to tell you where Snoke is.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second to last chapter. Next one will be a rollercoaster... so hang on!

The _Finalizer_ dropped out of hyperspace well clear of the cluster of anomalies ahead of it. The area of space where the Supreme Leader made his fortress was one that no ship the size of a _Resurgent_ class could navigate at lightspeed.

Hux stood on the bridge, back in his accustomed place. The Knights of Ren who had survived Ryloth were in their rooms, licking their wounds, but he was the one who would pay for their failure, and it made him frigid. Even his reflection already looked pale and ghostly in the transparisteel as the pilot began the task of guiding them through to the planetoid where he would meet his fate at last. It didn't matter. He was already dead.

They took separate shuttles down when they finally arrived. The Knights went back to their own separate facility, and Hux stood behind the crew as they expertly set the shuttle down inside the pressurized landing bay that adjoined the main base. It was the most modern area; the rest, he knew, looked like some kind of ancient temple, all stonework and foreboding bas-reliefs on the walls.

The doors to Supreme Leader Snoke's inner sanctum were without any of the decoration found elsewhere. Hux had only stood before them once, when he received his rank of General. He remembered the sense of overwhelming awe. Now, all he felt was dread.

The doors opened before him, and he walked through.

*

He had been put in binders and led from his new room. Rey was on one side, but her hand on his arm was more guiding than restraining. Only Finn and the Resistance guards who surrounded him seemed more wary, though Finn kept shooting him strange looks as they walked.

The doors to the command center opened and he entered, and as he did, all activity ceased. Only eyes, following him as he was escorted to the holoprojector in the center of the room. He did his best not to glance around too obviously, but he caught glimpses – the specifications of a familiar shuttle class, the positions of the First Order fleet, a blinking idle cursor marking the last known position of the _Finalizer_. Once he was there the usual noise and bustle resumed, but more people than usual seemed to be drifting by. He tried to ignore it.

His first real test came when a certain gold protocol droid shuffled up to him, its hands in the air. “Oh! Master Ben, sir! It _is_ good to see you again!”

“He'd rather not be called Ben, Threepio.” The General – Leia – his _mother_ said, her palms pressed to her console. “Could you bring up the map, please?”

“I apologize, Master Solo.”

Rey looked over at him worriedly, feeling the spike in his emotions at that name. “Just _sir_ will do,” he told Threepio.

“Of course, sir. The map is here.”

Threepio pressed a few buttons on the console and a holographic map of the galaxy appeared, spreading to fill the entire space around the projector. With Rey a few steps away, he moved, searching the stars and planets until he found a cluster.

“This one,” he said, raising his bound hands to point. “Magnify this cluster here.”

The projection zoomed in on the region of space indicated, filling just the projector area once more.

“Sector four-eight-besh, known only as the Sanctuary. Supreme Leader Snoke's base is on a planetoid near the center of it.”

Major Ematt furrowed his brows, studying the dense accumulation of quasars and stars grown bloated in their death throes. He understood the Major's trepidation, and heard the next question almost before it came. “How do we get there?”

“It's not possible to enter the cluster at lightspeed – the masses of all these anomalies would pull a ship out, pull it to pieces. The way is complicated, and must be navigated manually at sublight. There is absolutely no way to avoid detection prior to our arrival.”

“So basically, it's a killing field for anyone who tries to approach without proper clearance.”

“Exactly.”

“So,” his mother said, shutting off the projection. “How do we get in without getting blown to pieces?”

A few ideas were floated, and just as quickly dismissed, before he found his voice again. The idea had been growing in his mind, and as he'd listened, his grandfather's words had echoed in his thoughts. _Trust your heart._

“I have an idea,” he said slowly. Silence fell again as every eye turned to look at him with varying degrees of trust, interest, or open hate. “It's... mad. But I think it will work.”

The others around the projector exchanged a look. He tolerated it, though he felt annoyance rise in his chest. Couldn't they see this was difficult for him to do, and trust to that? At last, though, Admiral Statura made a gesture with his hand. 

“Go on.”

He took a breath. “The Knights arrived in a shuttle, which is now in your possession. Correct? I saw the shuttle on one of the displays walking in, and they don't travel in stormtrooper transports.”

Before anyone could stop her, Rey stepped forward. “We do have a command shuttle. It was damaged on its inbound flight, but it's nothing I can't fix.”

“Then I suggest we use it. Kylo Ren in a First Order command shuttle would not be turned away... especially if he arrives with a prisoner.”

He was looking at Rey, and he saw her moment of understanding. She went pale under the golden tan, but squared her shoulders and set her jaw and nodded.

“I would do it.”

“Oh no,” his mother – the General said, one of her hands becoming a fist. “I'm not letting you put yourself in danger, Rey. And I'm not going to be responsible for letting you go back to that man—“

“I want to go because I want to kill him,” he said simply. That shut _everyone_ up, with shock this time. “It's the only way I will be free.”

“And that matters to you?” Ackbar pressed. “Being free?”

“Then any decision is my own.”

The beings gathered around the projector exchanged a look. His mother caught it and nodded slightly. “I think we all need to discuss this,” she announced. “It's not something that should be undertaken without careful deliberation, if at all—“

“I _must_ do it!”

She looked at him and her expression softened, her eyes becoming warm even as her posture was still that of the General. “I know you feel you must. But this is not a decision you make alone.” 

*

They were escorted outside the command center and instructed to wait while the leadership – minus General Organa and her father – retreated to a conference room to debate Ben's plan. Rey could tell it grated on him, and after she'd finished talking to Finn and Poe in a low voice she let his pacing and muttering continue until she couldn't stand it anymore and went to sit beside him, exasperated.

“You can't _seriously_ be upset they aren't taking you at your word,” she snapped. “You're asking the Resistance, which you have been fighting against up until a few weeks ago, to take you at your word that when you re-adopt your former persona and take a First Order shuttle back to the... the _man_ who is at least partially responsible for the deaths of billions. Not to mention that you've committed unspeakable atrocities in his name. They're perfectly justified in wanting to talk about it first.”

“They're excluding my mother.”

“Because she's _your mother._ Honestly, Ben, for someone who's had a command for half his life you're astonishingly dense.”

“If you're only here to insult me...”

“Will you calm down? I'm here to tell you...” Rey organized her thoughts, excited, and he picked up on her excitement and looked over curiously. “I'm here to tell you that if the Resistance doesn't approve this mission, we're going to take you and the shuttle anyway and go to Snoke.”

“What?”

“You and I have this Force bond for a reason. We have some role to play, and we can't do that from here. And I have a feeling that we really don't have any choice but to go see this through, you and I. One way or the other, we will have to do it.”

He studied her in the Force, doubting her sincerity. Rey held his gaze and quashed the annoyance that came with knowing he was probing her, looking for any lack of conviction. She didn't have to be prickly herself, not anymore.

“If they don't agree,” he said at last, looking away. Then, more quietly, “Thank you.”

“You're welcome. But seriously, Ben—“ Rey hesitated, picking up on an odd ripple from him along their bond. “You still don't think that name fits.”

“Ben was a different person.”

“Then don't try to be _that_ Ben. Who you are now, make that your Ben.”

“Is it so simple?”

“I think so.” Rey covered one of his hands with hers briefly, then stood. “Besides, I'll be with you. We'll get through it.”

_I hope._

*

Maybe they shouldn't have been surprised when the leadership came back with a decision _not_ to pursue Ben's proposed mission. Perhaps also unsurprisingly was the fact Ben reacted badly.

“Why not?” he demanded, standing beside her, and Rey swallowed at the feeling of his anger (and, deeper down, his hurt) rising in her mind. “If Rey and I go it will succeed, I know it. You have the chance to cut off the head of the Order—“

“It's too risky – the chances of failure far outstrip the chances of success. Not only would we be losing a valuable captured asset in the shuttle, but we would lose you, a political prisoner—“ Rey winced as the anger was fueled by a spike of indignation followed by resigned acceptance of his status “—and we would lose Rey, one of a very few remaining Jedi in the galaxy.”

“Thanks in no small part to _your_ actions,” Ackbar added.

Rey spoke up, feeling it only proper she defend the idea. “I _want_ to go. This is why I've been training as a Jedi.” Her eyes searched out Luke, pleading. “How am I supposed to protect the galaxy and _not_ take risks?”

Luke shook his head, and Rey felt somewhat mollified when she sensed he was not happy with this decision either. “I gave the best counsel I could for proceeding with it. But there's nothing I can do.”

“We'll explore over avenues,” Statura told them. “In the meantime... Kylo Ren is to be moved to a more secure location.”

Rey and Ben weren't the only ones surprised. “ _What?_ ”

“After the attack by the Knights of Ren – the second such incursion against us on account of Kylo Ren's presence – it's been determined that continuing to hold him here constitutes unnecessary danger to the personnel and security of the Resistance. In three days' time he'll be transported offworld to a facility on Chandrila to await the tribunal that will determine his fate.”

Panic surged up in Ben, and Rey fought against it as it threatened to sweep her along. “You can't do this,” she protested. “You have no idea what it'll ruin—“

“No, Rey.” Ben's entire body was tense, and small objects on the console-desks around them had started rattling ominously. “I know what it's pointless to argue about being _sent away._ ”

His eyes were on his mother, and she felt sparks of hurt from both Leia and Luke. “Do you think I _want_ this?” the General asked, her eyes narrow. “Do you think it's at all the same now as it was? Because I can tell you that it isn't.”

“How am I supposed to know the difference?”

“Why can't you just trust—“ Leia stopped, sighed. “I guess I know why. Ben...”

“Take me back to my room,” he said. The objects rattled harder, then stilled completely. “I don't need to be here anymore.”

She walked him back to his room, her hand much more quelling now than it had been on the way out. When they got back to his room, Rey escorted him in and then closed the door, stepping around to undo his binders.

“As glad as I am that you didn't kill anyone,” she began, but stopped herself. That wasn't what he needed to hear, and the precipitous drop in his mood when she said it was confirmation. She started again.

“So. We have three days to fix the damage to the shuttle's deflectors and come up with a more fleshed-out plan.”

She felt surprise from him first, then something else, something she'd never sensed in him before. “You still want to go through with it? You meant what you said?”

“How many times will you have to ask that before you believe me? Look...” she ran a hand over her hair, absently fiddling with one of her buns. “When I took you from Belsavis, it was because I felt that there was something I needed you for, something beyond the Force bond. When my grandfather – when _our_ grandfather talked to me, I knew it to be true. And... and I think I didn't want to leave you behind. Not like I was left behind.”

Something deep within his mind cracked. Not in a way that made her nervous... no, it was more like some dam that had been slowly eroding had given way, and her own mind was flooded with brilliant light from it.

“Do you mean it?” he asked again, his voice a whisper.

“You know I do.” 

They stood like that a moment; Rey, basking in the light, and Ben – and she was glad to know that he had tentatively reassigned that name to himself – letting it reach parts of him for the first time in years.

“So,” Rey said after a few minutes. “Let's get to work.”

*

Luke found his sister on the night before the Republic transport arrived. It was scheduled to touch down at 0500 but knowing Leia, he doubted she'd sleep much between now, an hour before the midshift changed to night shift, and the minute she saw her son on board the transport. She was on the couch in her office, poring over reports and pretending to ignore the turmoil in her heart and mind. Wordlessly he sat beside her, drawing his legs up and waiting until she sighed and set the datapad down, her head in her hands.

“I'm afraid I've lost him again,” she murmured. “I'm afraid we found each other only to push each other away. Is that our fate, Luke? Am I forever in some kind of unstable orbit with my own son?”

Luke reached out not with a hand but with the Force along their bond, wrapping Leia in his love and care. “I worry this is going to tear Rey apart too. They're bonded like we are, and if something happens to him – I don't doubt the Republic will follow the letter of the law, but he's killed a lot of people...”

“She's been good for Ben.” Leia made an exasperated noise. “Why can't they ever just understand, Luke?”

“Because it doesn't work that way. Did you appeal to Chancellor Siela?”

“The order to move him _came_ from her.”

“...oh.”

“I'm out of options, Luke. I can't defy the Republic, not now when it's just reforming after the Hosnian system, not when they're beginning to resupply us.” She looked up at him and there were tears in her eyes. “What are we going to do?”

More than anything, Luke wished he had an answer for her. He wished he was forty years younger when he could just propose some brash plan and go tearing off across the galaxy to see it through. He wished it was at all possible to just ignore the Republic and do what needed to be done. But the galaxy had changed. Closing his eyes, he reached out in the Force, letting it guide him. Its light was always there, gentle, cradling him in it despite all his insecurities and doubt.

“We have to trust them, I think,” he said at last. “We have to trust that Rey and Ben will find a way. They've got this task they're meant to do. They'll do it.”

“How can you be so sure?” Leia asked, and he couldn't find an answer.

*

Rey hefted the second rucksack she'd needed to bring along over her shoulder. It was heavy in more than one way, its contents sliding around her consciousness like slick oil, but she ignored them and settled her load more comfortably. “Ready to go?”

Finn was absently rummaging in his immaculately-loaded pack, and when she reached out with a hand and the Force she felt the tension in him. He looked up a little guiltily. 

“Yeah, I'm ready.”

Without hesitation she reached out and pulled Finn to her, her fingers cupping the back of his head and holding him against her. “Thank you for doing this,” she whispered into his ear. “I know it's hard for you, being around him. I know what we're about to do is going to be hard for you.”

Finn buried his face in her shoulder. “You help,” he mumbled. “You make it easier. And this... it needs to be done. It's the only way this will end, and all the others... the ones who haven't been able to leave the Order, this'll help them. It feels like the right thing to do, so...”

He trailed off, and Rey pressed a kiss to his temple, then his cheek, then his mouth. “I'm glad you're coming with me, Finn,” she told him. Her chest seemed tight, too full to contain what she felt, but she had no words to describe it.

“I'll make it up to you and Poe. Promise.”

“We'll hold you to it.”

They had waited until almost the end of midshift, when people would be sleepy and ready to get something from the mess and get some rack time. Even the guards posted outside Ben's room didn't question why Rey and Finn were there so late, just stood aside and let her punch in her code. She felt a little bad for them – they didn't deserve this, and she'd left a note on her datapad saying that they shouldn't be punished.

Ben was right inside the door when it opened, and before the guards could react, he'd reached out in the Force and... Rey narrowed her eyes, trying to work out what it was he'd done to make them both slump over, even as she caught one and lowered him gently to the ground. Finn was doing the same with the second. She'd ask him about it later, maybe.

“We don't have a lot of time,” Finn said, checking his wrist chrono. “Two minutes.”

“That's plenty of time.” Ben stepped through the door, and Rey shoved the second rucksack at him. “What's this?”

“Supplies.” She waited until he'd slung it over his shoulder before jerking her head toward the landing pads. “Let's go.”

*

Poe edged up in the pilot's seat on board the shuttle (the First Order had named it _Lachryma_ which he'd decided was an absurd name for a shuttle and had informed Rey he was going to rename it as soon as they were back) and peered over the console, checking to make sure there weren't any ground crews nearby who'd see someone bringing up the shuttle's systems. They were lucky; this one was equipped with a hyperdrive of decent capability. That would make things a lot easier.

Satisfied that there wasn't anyone around, Poe sat up fully and began bringing the shuttle's systems online, running through preflight as fast as he could. Some things he could skip – weapons, for example – but he double-checked the deflector arrays. Rey knew her stuff, though, and the repairs she'd made working in the pitch-black of night held. “How's everything looking, BB-8?”

The droid had been silent since following Poe on board earlier in the night, but now its head swiveled to face its master. _[systems clear preflight, friend-Poe]_ it replied. _[begin calculations?]_

“Yeah, go for it, buddy. We'll need to make a quick exit anyway.” He glanced at his chrono and tried not to fidget.

Three figures burst from the living/working modules and sprinted across the landing pad. As soon as he heard the drum of boots on the ramp he brought up the repulsors, wincing a little at the high whine they made. “All aboard!” he called out.

Rey dropped into the co-pilot's seat a moment later, her rucksack hitting the floor behind. “One minute,” she said, then cocked her head. “Maybe less. Luke's—my father's picked up on my excitement.”

“Good thing we're already warmed up then. Everyone strapped in?”

“Really? _That's_ what you're worried about?”

“I don't want you or Rey to get hurt!”

“What about me?” Ben sounded indignant. Poe just made a noise and they lifted up on repulsors, the landing gear retracting. 

“Bringing deflectors online... you did good, Rey, they're holding at 98% peak.”

“Of course I did.” Rey's hands flew over her console. “Bringing up sublights, lowering wings.”

There was the faint sound of machinery as the wings extended and locked into flight position and then they were off, rising above Ryloth's stark landscape even as the base suddenly erupted into activity, people scrambling out to ships and training lights on them as they shot up into the sky.

“Control is hailing us,” Finn said. “What do I say?”

“Nothing.” Poe gripped the yoke and brought them up out of atmosphere. “Hope you're all ready to commit treason, those who haven't done it before...”

“It's not treason if we're helping,” Rey said primly, watching her display. “Clear of Ryloth's gravity... now. We can jump on your command.”

“Make it quick.” Finn was watching a tactical display. “Ships are scrambling from the outer system and from the surface. ETA—“

“Doesn't matter.” Poe grabbed the lever. “Lightspeed in three... two... one...”

*

Leia watched with a mix of anger and amusement as the shuttle dropped off their scanners.

“They never responded to our hails,” Comms said.

“Their vector indicates that cluster of astral anomalies where Kylo Ren placed Snoke's stronghold,” Telemetry added, looking over at their tactical display. “We can scramble pursuit...”

Everyone's eyes went to Leia, but she spread her hands with a smile. “My son is on board, as are my aide... and my niece,” she added after a confirmatory glance at Luke, making sure it was all right. “I must recuse myself.”

“I'm not officially a ranked officer in the Resistance,” Luke said when attention shifted to him. “And as Leia said, I'm rather intimiately involved here.”

They were very politely but very firmly asked to leave after that, escorted from the command center by two embarrassed-looking security personnel. The giddy feeling persisted through the first stirrings of trepidation over what they'd just done, what they were about to do.

“We're going to have to get help to them somehow,” Leia announced as soon as the door to her room had closed behind them. “I know the beings in the command center – they'll talk about sending pursuit, but it won't happen, and I'm not going to leave my son and my niece without aid. Any ideas?”

They tossed a few back and forth that obviously weren't going to go anywhere. But just when they were about to break off, the door chimed. When it opened, it revealed that Chewbacca, Artoo, and Threepio were standing clustered in the corridor, in various states of excitement.

“General!” Threepio exclaimed. “And Master Luke, it is good to see both of you here. Chewbacca, Artoo and myself have come with a most unusual proposal.”

“What is it?”

“Given your predicament, we thought it prudent to bring forward an idea we—yes, Artoo, I mean you and Chewbacca—had regarding rendering aid to Master Ben and Mistress Rey.”

Luke and Leia exchanged a look. “The Force is mysterious in its ways,” Luke murmured. “Come in, everyone. Tell us what you had in mind.”

*

Poe sat back from the console once he’d confirmed no ships had followed them into hyperspace. “Transit time is twelve hours, twenty-five minutes,” he said. “Is there any place I can get some sleep on this piece of First Order junk?”

Behind him, Ren – Ben – looked up from where he’d been staring at a display of their destination. “Behind the cockpit,” he said. “That’s where the pilots go. It’s not comfortable.”

“That’s fine.” 

Ben got up and moved aft toward the passenger compartment, and after a moment’s hesitation Rey followed him, her fingers brushing over first Poe’s hand, then Finn’s shoulder. For his part Finn seemed torn, but when Poe moved past him to the narrow cubby with two bunks, he found he had an armful of Finn when he laid down.

“You don’t want to be out learning about the Force from them?” Poe murmured against the top of Finn’s head. He didn’t need the Force to know the other man was worried about something; he could feel it in the tension of Finn’s shoulders, in the way he ducked his head and pressed his face against Poe’s warm throat, his hands curling into Poe’s shirt.

“Not now. Not yet.”

“Is that a Jedi feeling or a Finn feeling?”

“Both. And I’m… I worry…”

“That this is all going to go sideways?”

Finn shifted, uncomfortable with where his thoughts were leading him, and Poe stroked his short hair and kept his mouth shut until Finn found his words again.

“I had a dream,” he said in a small voice. “I saw Rey, lying on a stone altar in an old temple. She was dead.”

“It was just a dream,” Poe began, but Finn shook his head.

“It didn’t feel like one. It felt real.”

“Nightmares can do that.”

“That wasn’t all. She had been… someone had cut her so her blood was draining out of her arms and throat, and she was staring right at me, and… and Kylo Ren – Ben – whatever he wants to be called, he was there, catching her blood in a bowl. It was all over him, like he’d been bathed in it.”

“Finn…”

“And then he got up, looking over his shoulder at me, and ignited his lightsaber, and as soon as he raised it to strike at me I woke up.”

“It was just a nightmare, Finn.”

“I don’t know. I just… I have a bad feeling about this, okay?”

He went quiet after that, and Poe stroked his hair until he heard Finn’s breathing shift into sleep. Only then did he close his eyes and let himself drift off into an uneasy slumber.

*

Ben was just sitting down in the middle of the passenger cabin, and watched her as she sat across from him, their knees barely touching.

“You aren’t going to be getting some sleep with your…” he trailed off, waving a hand.

“Not yet. I probably should.”

“You _really_ should. If we’re going to face Snoke, you’ll need every ounce of strength you have and then more. He’s ancient, powerful, and ruthless, and he’s always prepared.”

“Then why aren’t _you_ sleeping?”

“Because I didn’t want to bunk with the three of you.” Ben took in her unimpressed look and rolled his eyes. “ _And_ I wanted to meditate for a while. Settle my thoughts.”

“Is that even possible?”

“I’d like to think so.” Ben sighed, abandoning his stiff meditation posture to slump forward, elbows on knees. He looked exhausted, and if she’d thought he wanted it Rey would have reached out in the Force and lent him a bit of her own strength. But she felt taut, stretched too thin herself, and she knew he’d just reject the offer anyway.

“I wanted to try something,” Rey said. “I wanted to see if we can make our link an active one. If it works passively, why shouldn’t it be even more effective when we’re trying to use it?”

“Why in the seven hells would you _want_ that?”

“Because I think it might help?”

Ben studied her face, ascertained she wasn’t lying, joking, or otherwise leading him on, and nodded. It occurred to Rey that this was an act of incredible trust on his part, the likes of which he probably hadn’t shown to another living being in over a decade, and so when he held his hands out to her, she took them and didn’t comment on the slight tremor in their grip.

“Where do we start?”

“I think,” Rey said, chewing on her lip, “Small? Just… being open. I think it’ll be hard for both of us.”

Equally as hesitant, Ben took in a breath. “Okay. That sounds… okay.”

They closed their eyes.

Somehow it had never occurred to Rey just _how_ powerful Ben was. She’d known, in the sense that she’d known how to pilot a ship before ever touching the controls of the _Falcon_ on Jakku, but nothing prepared her for how it felt to suddenly have Ben fully in her head. His Force presence was like a wide sea tossed by a storm, and Rey stood on its brink and felt just the edges of it, just the waves lapping at her toes, and gasped as suddenly the water surged and she was drowning in its blue-green depths, clawing to get at the surface—

And then she got a flash of what he was feeling – a creature of cold and dark suddenly transported to wide rolling sand dunes, a place of stark beauty and unimaginable shifting dangers, an expanse that went on and on without end – and they both drew back, shuddering.

“Too much?” Ben asked. He seemed apologetic, or amused.

“Way too much. I think… I think there must be a way to touch, without getting the full effect, you know?”

They both stayed as they were, thinking, and then Ben shifted in his seat. “I think I have an idea,” he said. “It’ll be… it’s hard, I’ve never had cause to restrain myself like this. But I think this is will work.”

“Show me.”

He did, and they tried again. Now Rey saw herself on a rocky outcrop in the middle of the sea, the waves breaking high on the edges. She thought, _calm, calm_ , and slowly, slow as the movements of the dunes across the desert, she saw the waters around the rock begin to settle. 

_Ben was on a salt flat, dry and dead, mountains in the distance only a haze of green. He put his hand to the ground, saw the white crystals turn into water beneath his fingers, and then he was the source of water moving across the plain, bringing life to a place that had only needed one thing to bloom_

They pulled back again, but Rey had the way of it now, and she grinned at him. “We did it!”

“Once,” he muttered. 

They practiced again and again until Rey could calm the sea and direct its power, and then they tried it without the images. It was heady, almost a complete doubling of her ability to touch and manipulate the Force, and by the time they dropped their hands Ben was staring at her with something like admiration.

“You figured out so much on your own,” he said. “You saw what I did… what I did to you… and you took that and just… _did_ it.”

“Is that hard?”

“Most people don’t pick things up that quickly. Most Force users don’t.”

“We aren’t most _anything,_ ” Rey told him. “Let’s try it again.”

They linked their fingers together, reaching out—and suddenly the world went dark.

_You return to me at last._

Dimly Rey was aware of Ben gasping, that his hand had suddenly gone ice-cold in hers as though all the life in him was being sucked out. He tried to pull away but their hands were locked together, and an irrational part of Rey feared that if she let go of him then he would be pulled into that darkness and lost, and she wouldn’t be able to stomach it. She stood on her mental island and tried to calm the waters instead, fighting against the storm.

_And you’re bringing the scavenger._

She knew who it was, knew the ancient voice, because Ben knew it. She pushed back hard against it, but it was like trying to move a mountain one stone at a time. The voice laughed, a grating, broken sound.

_You couldn’t stop me any more than he could, child,_ Snoke told her. _And now that I know he is bringing you with him, I can almost forgive his other transgressions._

“Leave her alone,” Rey heard dimly. “I won’t let you have her!”

_I would like to see you try and stop me, boy. I look forward to meeting you at last, daughter of Skywalker._

It took every ounce of effort in her, but Rey pushed back against the voice, grinding her teeth so hard her jaw ached. “My name,” she snarled, “Is _Rey!_ ”

They were thrown apart by the backwash, but instead of an absence of Snoke there was now the pregnant sense of waiting, like he had left the room and would be back momentarily. But when she looked into Ben’s eyes she felt truly the pain of what had just happened, because his eyes were full of fear.

“I—“ he began, but just scrambled back instead, stumbling down into the antechamber where the landing ramp was. Rey let him go, too drained, and when Poe and Finn came in to see what the noise was she just shook her head wordlessly.

“I’ll tell you later, I promise,” she said. “I just need to sleep.”

Finn helped her up and she leaned heavily on him as they maneuvered their way into the narrow bunk. Somehow they managed to work it so that she was on her side pressed between the two of them, and she basked in the warmth and safety. Finn’s hand was on her stomach and Poe had his arm over both of them, pressing her arm down against her side. Sleep, when it came, was not restful.

*

“Is that—“

“No way, it can't be—“

“What are they _doing here_ do you think—“

Standing outside the conference room, Leia kept her smile on her face as she leaned over. “I swear by all the stars and planets, if this ends up being a mistake, I'll dismantle Threepio myself,” she said. Luke coughed into his hand.

“I'm sure it'll be fine. They're old friends! Or at least, one of them is.”

“The other one has been a criminal since before we were even _born._ Lando!” Leia held out her hands, making a surprised sound as one of the men wrapped her up in a hug. “It's good to see you again.”

“You too, Leia.” Lando Calrissian's hair had gone to salt-and-pepper, but his eyes were still bright when he stepped back enough to put his hands on Leia's shoulders, a sober expression on his face. “I'm sorry about Han. I wish we'd had time for a real party, like he would have wanted... but I get the sense we're about to have one, eh? Oh!” He gestured to the Weequay beside him. “Allow me to introduce—“

“Hondo Ohnaka, at your service!” The Weequay swept his hat off and bowed low in a flourish. “It honors me greatly that I would be considered for this task, this gargantuan—“

“We're grateful,” Leia said, her voice cutting him off. “But we need to keep this quiet. Let's go inside and we'll have some refreshments and talk about the details, mm?”

Both Lando and Luke watched, amused, as Leia slipped her hand around Hondo's arm and lead him into the conference room. “Now, I've heard many stories about the famous smuggler, Hondo Ohnaka. Is it true you knew my father, Anakin Skywalker?”

“Oh, my dear, I like to think that General Skywalker and I were great friends...”

“I don't know how she does it,” Lando half-whispered, leaning over so their voices didn't carry up to Leia's ears.

“It's her particular Force ability,” Luke replied. “Did you bring your daughters? I haven't seen them since, you know, before...”

“Just the youngest two. Bree, she's running a station in Thursa sector, doing business with Mandalore—very profitable business, you know, she's her father's daughter all the way—and Kel...”

His face fell, and Leia looked up from where she'd set a cup of caf in front of Hondo. “Kel was on Hosnian Prime,” she said quietly. “She'd gone to serve one of the Senators. She wanted to get into politics.”

“One of my own flesh and blood, going legit.” Lando shrugged, but it wasn't with his usual nonchalant flair. “Can't imagine it. Couldn't. But Adeela made a beeline for the comm center and Piva's probably already mooning after that one pilot, what was her name—“

“Pava.”

“Yes, her. I warned her off X-Wing ace pilots, but she doesn't listen.”

“This is all very nice, very chummy, I like it,” Hondo said. “And the caf is good! Yes, very good. But I was brought here under the impression we were going to talk _business._ ”

“Of course. What we're proposing will be highly profitable for you, gentlemen, both in terms of monetary gain and in terms of other, less tangible benefits. But it will also be highly dangerous.”

“Danger is nothing to Hondo, I have flown with your crazy General father before he went crazy. Get to the point already, General.”

“We want you to fly with us into the heart of First Order-controlled space, to Snoke's stronghold inside a maze of spatial anomalies that could each rip us apart, and help us rescue four of our own.”

Both of them burst out laughing. “She is a joker, this one!” Hondo said. Lando, though, was laughing with a slight hysterical edge to it.

“You haven't changed a bit, Princess,” he said. “Still just as crazy as the day you walked into Cloud City and gave me a look that would've flayed me alive. Hondo, I'd suggest taking her up on it. Not only will whatever she's cooked up work, it'll turn a spectacular profit for you.”

“She is clearly mad,” Hondo insisted, but he seemed to be wavering on this point. “How much would we be paid? And in what currency? Credits are no good in some places of the galaxy, you know.”

“We're aware. We're prepared to negotiate in credits but exchange that amount for the equivalent in whatever currency you ask for.”

“You must be very desperate,” Lando murmured. “Who is it, anyway? Who's stupid enough to go running off to the sarlacc pit of the First Order itself?”

“My daughter,” Luke said. “And her lovers. And my nephew. They defied orders and took off, and the longer we wait, the longer they'll be without backup.”

“Ben? He's back?”

Hondo leaned forward, suddenly very curious. “You said _lovers?_ ”

“Not the important part.” 

“Right, right, yes...” Hondo leaned back, throwing his hands up. “It will not be the first time I have helped Jedi! Let me tell you what _I_ want...”

Several hours and many cups of caf later, both men took off in their ships, headed to opposite ends of the galaxy. They'd pull together whatever compatriots they could, anyone who could be bought or convinced, and they'd meet Luke and Leia a parsec from the Sanctuary.

“This is a terrible plan,” Leia grumbled, putting their used cups into the galley unit to be cleaned. “We're more likely to kill Ben and Rey ourselves than help them, throwing a bunch of smugglers into the mix.”

“I think they can take care of themselves.”

“They think so too, which is what's gotten us into this position in the first place.”

“I seem to remember another rebellion that relied on smugglers pretty heavily.” Luke was nursing a cup of hot chocolate, the foam speckling his beard. Leia privately thought that he ought to shave it off – it aged him terribly – but she didn't have to look too hard to know he was worried sick about Rey.

“She'll be all right,” Leia murmured, smiling. If she didn't feel it inside for herself, she could feel it for her brother. Luke knew, of course, and Leia closed her eyes at the gentle, warm affection he pushed into her very heart and soul.

“Ben will be, too. They've got each other. Who better?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to talk to me over at my [tumblr!](teslatricity.tumblr.com)


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the final chapter! Once again, a huge thank you to my betas/cheerleaders/ideas machines Anne and [NoRationalThoughtRequired](http://archiveofourown.org/users/NoRationalThoughtRequired/profile), without whom this fic would be a lot less entertaining and a lot shorter. 
> 
> More info at the end...

Ben woke from a fitful sleep to find Rey standing over him. She had one of the rucksacks in her hand and was studying him closely, as though waiting to see if Snoke would leap out of his eyes and grab at her. Perhaps he would; Ben had no idea how that worked, and he’d been around Snoke for most of his life, in some way.

“You could have taken the other bunk, you know,” she told him.

“I didn’t want to make it worse.”

“You wouldn’t have. But I understand.” She sat across from him, reaching out for his hands. He drew them back at first, but she stubbornly took them and held them in hers. “We won’t be able to do this without each other,” Rey said. “And no matter what… I know we’re stronger together. I’ll keep him off you.”

“I don’t think you understand what that means. He won’t give me up without getting something in return.” Ben gripped her fingers like they were the last thing keeping him in this universe. Maybe they were. “He wants you, he’s wanted you to join him since Starkiller, and I… I can’t let that happen.”

“It won’t happen. If I have to die—“

“No!” Panic rose in him. He couldn’t imagine the galaxy without Rey in it, without her light. She mattered; if anyone had to die, it ought to be him. That way, at least he'd be remembered for his sacrifice, not his sins. “No. I won’t let that happen.”

“It might not be your choice.”

“I’ll _make_ it my choice.” Rey had too many people who mattered and who loved her. Who did he have? Who loved him?

“I love you,” Rey whispered, squeezing his hand. “Don’t go to such dark places, Ben.”

He couldn’t reply to that, not honestly, so he just sat in silence until Rey let his hand drop and pushed the rucksack toward him.

“We’ve got about thirty minutes before we drop out of hyperspace,” she said. “Finn’s left you some rations in the passenger cabin. You should eat, and…” her eyes tracked over him again. “Get dressed.”

“I’m dressed now.”

“Yes, but we think this might help us get past whatever challenges there are to us entering this field of anomalies.

He flipped back the top flap on the rucksack and inhaled sharply. The lights of the shuttle gleamed harshly on pitted black metal and chrome, and the helmet seemed to vibrate slightly in his grasp as he pulled it out, holding it up. It couldn’t have been more than a month ago that he’d had this on last, and yet it felt like a lifetime. Beneath the helmet were his robes and cowl, balled up and stuffed into the sack, and his lightsaber had been wrapped inside them. It felt… odd. Not like it used to.

“I saved them,” Rey said, needlessly. Her fingers were twisting around the silver hilt of her own lightsaber. “I thought they might be useful one day. I guess scavenger still describes me after all.”

“A transmission from Kylo Ren would make any captain back off,” Ben said. “You have good instincts.”

“Right. Well. I’ll leave you to get dressed.”

She left and he laid everything out on the ramp, dressing quickly and methodically as he always had. Pants and shirt, coat, robe, belt, cowl. He clipped his lightsaber to his belt, feeling it weigh him down like a planet. The helmet he left on a seat in the passenger compartment after he forced down the rations left out for him. He’d need his strength if they were going to be successful.

The visor gleamed malevolently at him, as though it knew he had rejected his right to wear it. _You don’t control me,_ Ben thought viciously, and went forward to the cockpit.

The effect was immediate and palpable. Fear spiked in Finn and Poe, so strong from the latter that Ben almost choked on it, and Rey reached out instantly. Ben tried not to look at the way her hand slid along the pilot’s arm, comforting and grounding him, pulling his mind away from his dark memories. He rested a gloved hand on the back of her seat and leaned over past Finn, who seemed to be unable to talk or move.

“How long?” he asked.

“Five minutes,” Rey said, when nobody else seemed willing to reply.

“When we’ve passed any challenge,” Ben said to Poe, who was pale under his tan skin, “I’ll have to take your place. The way is tricky, ever-shifting. You could do it, I’m sure, but it’d be easier with Rey and I at the helm.”

“Fine by me,” Poe muttered. “Can you _not_ hover here, just now?”

Ben retreated to the back of the cockpit, watching as Rey snaked her mind out to Finn, soothing his half-formed thoughts remembering a burning village and a flat, chromed gaze, saw how she drew the edge off Poe’s panic until he could manage it himself. 

_How am I supposed to fix this?_ he thought morosely, and fetched his helmet with a minute to spare.

“Dropping out of hyperspace,” Poe said, his fingers on the lever. “Three… two… one… reversion.”

The cloudy walls of hyperspace gave way to streaks gave way to stars, and as Poe brought the shuttle around, the viewer filled with a massive cluster of nearly every known kind of astral anomaly, all shrouded in clouds of dust. Arrayed between them and the nebulous, shifting wall, were three _Resurgent_ -class Star Destroyers.

“They’re querying our transponder,” Poe murmured when a light on the console lit up. “Sending information and code clearance. Good thing I haven’t decided on a new name for this thing yet. I was thinking _Ray of Light_.”

He grinned over at Rey (a bit shakily, but more assured than he had been a few minutes before), who gave him a steady look.

“We could name it the _Nerf Herder_ ,” she countered sweetly.

“Nah, this beauty isn’t a Nerf Herder—ah, we’re being hailed.” He pressed the comm button. “This is First Order shuttle KR-81108, _Lachryma._ We’ve come with Lord Ren and his prisoner.”

“Hopefully that’s enough,” Finn muttered.

The response came a moment later. “ _We were not informed of Lord Ren’s arrival by the Supreme Leader, and he has made his wishes clear – no ships in or out of the Sanctuary._ ”

Ben slipped the helmet on, feeling it slide to fit his head with a hiss of compressed air as it made a seal with his collar and the sterile filtered air began to circulate. Poe was stalling as the helmet’s audio receptors crackled to life. “…really wouldn’t be wise to do this, he’s in a _really_ bad mood—“

At his mental prodding, Rey activated the holographic comm unit. When the light came on, Ben spoke.

“Captain,” he said, hearing the flat vocoder voice as though it belonged to someone else. “Do you need a reminder of what happens when you disobey the will of a servant of the Supreme Leader?”

There was a pause, and a small holoprojection of the Captain – it was Captain Jurle, he saw, a competent enough commander for a ship the size of her _Enforcer._ \- bloomed in between Poe and Rey. “I apologize, Lord Ren,” the Captain said, clearly shaken. “I have orders directly from the Supreme Leader – no ships in or out of the Sanctuary—“

“I am his right hand,” Ben said. “I speak with his voice and act as he wills me. You are nothing to him, and so you are nothing to me. Will you still stand in my way, or must I take this up with the Supreme Leader? I’m certain he would _love_ to be disturbed in his sanctum with this matter.”

There was a pause, and even on the small projection, Ben could see Jurle’s throat constrict as she swallowed. “My deepest apologies, my lord,” she said at last. “I am only trying to follow the orders I was given.”

“The Supreme Leader will appreciate your loyalty to him,” Ben said brusquely, and cut off the feed. Poe took the shuttle past the Star Destroyers, and when Ben had gotten his helmet off and stowed it beside the pilot’s seat, he switched seats. Poe went aft, presumably to recover his wits, and Ben gripped the yoke and steered them into the mists.

It was a combination of knowing the path and using the Force, for him. Usually he’d been in his rooms while the _Finalizer_ ’s helm dealt with the ever-shifting conditions within the Sanctuary, but Snoke had made him run the path himself more than once. Having Rey there helped, the two of them melding together in the Force, making corrections for each other’s movements. It was the least lonely Ben had felt since walking away from the Temple with the Knights of Ren, and it was exhilarating.

The whole transit took close to two hours. Finn stayed with them – he didn’t trust Ben, and Ben couldn’t blame him – but Poe only came back when the planetoid came into view.

“Huh,” he said, and dropped into one of the seats.

The planetoid itself was small and barren; it barely had an atmosphere most sentient species could breathe, and gravity was lighter than optimal due to its small size. Ben couldn’t say if it had ever been a real planet or if Snoke had pulled it together by the force of his will alone; certainly he couldn’t imagine anyone living here by choice, at least. The planetoid was only lit by a dim and dying star, a red giant that had nearly reached the end of its lifespan, and it cast an ill-omened glow across the planetoid and the asteroids that littered the space around it. The asteroids themselves were mined, and gun emplacements had been built onto some of them, but presumably word had been passed in from the ships outside, and they weren’t challenged again.

“That’s the _Finalizer_ ,” Finn said, when a single Star Destroyer came into view in orbit around the planetoid.

“General Hux will know better than to challenge a ship he knows I’m on.” Ben made a face. “At least, he’d better. I’m not in a mood to deal with him.”

They asked for, and immediately received, landing clearance. The system was automated, the vector droid-generated. There were generally no more beings on planet than absolutely necessary; the Knights of Ren had a propensity to murder, and Snoke was too paranoid to allow anyone on his base he didn’t feel completely able to control.

That thought made Ben’s mouth twist down. Clearly, Snoke had thought the same of him, and now sat smug on his throne, thinking Ben came to him willingly. Well, he would not do it again.

“I won’t let him,” Rey murmured. They exchanged a glance, and then she got up. “Finn,” she said softly, “Poe? I’d like to talk to you both before we land.”

Ben took the hint, collected his helmet, and left the cockpit. The door slid shut behind him, and he was left to wait in the passenger compartment as the ship set itself down on the landing pad, the familiar distant thuds of the wings collapsing and locking in the upright position echoing through the sudden silence. He set about checking his clothing – still appeared to be Kylo Ren, still had the lightsaber, the helmet was difficult to lose – and nudged the obviously non-regulation things out of sight in case the shuttle was boarded while they were gone. Then he dropped into a crouch and meditated.

The three others emerged from the cockpit a few minutes later. Rey appeared resolute, but her Force presence was vacillating wildly between panic, fear, and resolve. Finn and Poe were afraid. Both of them kept reaching out to touch Rey, like they’d never get another chance. Ben turned away and put his helmet on, pulling the cowl on his shoulders up to cover it.

“It’s time,” he said. “Rey?”

“Got ‘em.” She pulled a set of First Order binders out of one of the bags. Poe put them on, his fingers brushing over her hands unnecessarily as he tightened them down. When he was done, he took the lightsaber off her belt and handed it to Ben.

“Better keep this. Prisoners aren’t supposed to have weapons,” he said flatly. Ben took it, glad for his gloves; he thought perhaps if he touched the lightsaber hilt with his bare hands it would burn him.

“You know what your part is?” he asked them.

Finn hefted one of the other rucksacks, a grim expression on his face. “We’re ready,” he said. “Set your chronos on my mark…”

With a thought Kylo Ren brought up the helmet’s HUD chrono and synchronized it, listening to Poe tell BB-8 to stay with the shuttle, and then Finn was lowering the ramp and he was marching Rey out ahead of him, and the lights of Snoke’s sanctum glowed ahead of them.

It was remarkably easy to fall back into his mannerisms, his way of walking and carrying himself. He supposed such fundamental things wouldn’t change much, but it still felt odd. It didn’t quite fit like it used to. Or perhaps he was picking up on Rey’s nerves, jittering up and down the scale so crazily he thought for sure he would go mad before they ever reached their objective. 

As expected they didn’t encounter much in the way of ground crew. The whole sanctum operated on a skeleton crew, so there was no one to watch as Kylo Ren paused before the door that led from the hangar bay into the sanctum as two more men emerged from the shuttle and accompanied them inside.

*

Almost no one, anyway.

Green eyes narrowed as she saw the quartet leave the shuttle bay, even as her gut twisted in sudden fear and anger. 

_How dare he let her come here?_ she thought, and ran quickly to a side door out of the hangar.

 

*

“Snoke doesn’t have security systems here,” Ben said, leading them through the maze of corridors. “He doesn’t trust many people to be in the facility at any one time – only people he explicitly trusts, such as he does, and people he intends to kill, or punish. There’ll be a maximum of fifty people.”

“That’s good.” Rey hated having her hands bound in front of her, but even though there were so few people around she still didn’t want to run the risk of their plot being discovered. “Hopefully we won’t have too many of them to contend with—“

“There’s only one you need to contend with.”

In the middle of the corridor they’d just turned into was a woman in First Order officer dress. Ben made an irritable gesture with a hand. “Out of the way, Officer—“

“Oh, I don't think so.” 

Her tone of voice didn't seem like one most First Order officers would have used when ostensibly confronted by Kylo Ren. But it wasn’t that which made Rey, Finn, and Ben pull up short; it was the sudden flicker of a new Force presence, emanating from the woman before them.

Ben was the first to speak, disbelieving. “ _Aunt Mara?_ ”

“Aunt M—“ Rey’s eyes snapped to this woman. “Are you my—“

“Quiet, Rey.” Mara’s voice wasn’t terribly severe, and her eyes flickered with just a hint of affection when she looked at Rey before they were emerald chips again, boring into the group. “I will ask this once: _what the kriff are you doing here?_ ”

“We’re here to end the First Order,” Rey answered, stubbornly refusing to quiet her own voice even for her mother. “By—“

“No, don’t say it. It’s the kind of insane thing...” Mara put her face in her hands a moment, then looked up. “Who put you up to it? Was it Skywalker? I’m going to _kill_ him—“

“It wasn’t Master Skywalker,” Finn said. “It was, uh. Us. Ma’am.”

Mara peered at him a moment. “You’re the trooper who defected,” she said at last. “Good for you, kid. But listen, you all don’t know what you’re up against.”

“I think I do know,” Ben said. Even through the vocoder, he sounded a little sullen. Mara turned her ice-chip eyes on him.

“If you knew, you wouldn’t have been under his thumb for fifteen years,” she replied icily. “And then to return and drag your cousin into it when you almost killed her once, are you _finishing the job_ , then?”

“What? No!”

“Look,” Poe said, putting up his hands and stepping in front of them. “I know this needs to get worked out, but we really need to keep moving, because the longer we’re here the more likely it is that we’ll be discovered. Okay?”

Mara made a noise of exasperation, but nodded, tilting her head down the corridor. “This way,” she said. “There’s a conference room we can talk in. Oh, and Ben, Snoke does have security systems. He probably already knows the four of you are thundering around here like a herd of rampaging beasts.”

“Calm down,” Rey hissed to him as they followed Mara down the corridor. 

“I’m glad you take after your father,” Ben muttered. Mara shot him a dark look over her shoulder.

“I heard that,” she said, opening a door. “In here, you lot.”

They filed in, and Mara security-locked the door after them. “I was going to send this to the Resistance,” she said, pulling a ring on a chain out from under her uniform and setting it on the table, pushing a groove on it with a fingernail. “But since the Resistance has sent you here… Ben, take that thing off, you’re not fooling anyone here.”

“They didn’t, actually,” Rey said as Ben took his helmet off, setting it down on the table as a map of the planetoid blossomed above the polished surface. “They told us not to go.”

“We don’t listen very well. Sometimes.” Finn leaned on the table, studying the map. “I’ve never been off the _Finalizer_ the few times we came here. Is this really it?”

“It’s not a big installation. Snoke, he… he doesn’t need a lot here, at the center of it all. He’s the spider, and the First Order is his web, and he just sits and waits for something to get caught in it.” Mara pointed to a series of large chambers near the center of the building. “Here’s his throne room and all the equipment rooms that he uses personally. We’re kept out of there, mostly. I’ve never been able to get inside, and honestly, I’m not sure I want to.” Her face took on a faraway, haunted look. “I’ve spent enough time in the presence of tyrants.”

“Do you know where most of the personnel are stationed?” Poe asked. “We’ve got a bag full of explosives, and we’d rather not kill everyone here if we don’t have to.”

“Big of you.” Mara waved her hand, and the map shifted, areas glowing brightly or dimly or not at all. “Most of the on-base personnel are in the comms rooms and barracks, or officer’s rooms, if they’re lucky. There’s only a small complement of troopers down here; most of us are command staff. I’m a signal intelligence officer, so I was deemed necessary and brought down while the transition is made up on the _Finalizer._ ”

Ben looked up. “Transition?”

“General Hux has been… reprimanded, for his continued failure to recapture you from the Resistance. Severely. He’s held here.” She gestured to one of the dimly glowing areas, and now that Rey looked at it she could see it was clearly a cell block, with narrow rooms and no doors. “Awaiting the pleasure of the Supreme Leader as to when his life should be forfeit.”

Something queased in Rey’s stomach, but it wasn’t her own feeling. Curiously she looked at Ben, but her cousin’s expression hadn’t changed. “Even the General doesn’t deserve Snoke’s brand of punishment,” he said. “He’d be a valuable prisoner.”

“Oh, Ben, we _can’t_ ,” Rey said, when she picked up the idea. “We have an objective—“

“No, he’s got a point,” Finn agreed, which earned him a surprised look from Ben. “Look, here’s the cell block, right? And here’s Snoke’s chambers, and _here_ is the main power plant for the installation. We blow that, this place goes dark.”

“And it supplies power to the Knights’ installation,” Ben added. “Through underground conduits. We take both facilities out at once.”

“I like it,” Mara muttered. “Simple, means there’s less chance of things going south. We rescue the General, blow the power, and then I’ll go after Snoke—“

“No!” When Mara narrowed her eyes, Rey just tilted her chin up. “Ben and I have to do it. We’re meant to. It’s why we’re here.”

“You’re here because your heads have been filled with some dreck about destiny by a bunch of glowing old men, I’ll warrant—“

“Just one,” Ben said softly. “Our grandfather. Anakin Skywalker.”

“I know who your grandfather was. I knew him by a different name, he was completely lost in the head… but I suppose it runs in the bloodline. I knew what I was getting into when I took up with Skywalker.” Mara sighed, let her head drop. “My cover’s going to be blown after this anyway. I may as well help you as best I can. I’m going with you two into Snoke’s inner sanctum, though, and no arguing about it. You’re powerful, both of you, but you’re undisciplined and untrained—no, none of that counts, Ben, it came from _him_. You’ll need me.”

“Fine,” Rey agreed, before Ben could protest. “Let’s go, before our luck runs out entirely.”

*

“You want us to fly into _that?_ ”

Gripping the _Falcon's_ yoke, Leia set her jaw and took them in closer to the Star Destroyers guarding the one safe-looking gap in the nebulous wall. “ _I_ am going to fly into that, _you two_ are going to do the talking.”

“You are going to fly this?” 

Chewbacca growled a warning at Hondo's disbelieving tone, then a more decisive grunt at Leia. “I've got an excellent co-pilot,” Leia agreed, and nosed the _Falcon_ in close. “Be ready to signal the rest.”

The comm crackled. “ _You are violating First Order space. We know who you are. Turn back now and we won't shoot you out of the sky._ ”

Leia held her course and motioned for Lando to speak. “Star Destroyer, uh, _Imperious_ \--”

“' _Imperious?_ ' Really?” Leia muttered. Hondo snickered.

“--we're on a diplomatic mission—“

“Doesn't work,” Leia hissed. “Tried it.”

“ _Who is that? Who else do you have on your ship?_ ”

“This was a terrible plan anyway,” Leia said, cutting off the comm channel. “Hondo, signal the rest of the ships. They know what they're supposed to do.”

Thirty seconds later, the space around the three Star Destroyers was full of ships. Not only had a few well-placed comments managed to get the whole of Blue and Red X-Wing squadrons to volunteer, but Luke had convinced a few of their old friends from the Rebellion to join in. Luke was on one of the larger frigates with Wedge Antilles, and Leia privately thought it was a wonder the two of them had actually showed up on time. Put those two together, she thought, using the confusion to make a run for the opening in the nebulae, and they'd be up half the night talking.

“We're heading in,” she said over the secure comm to Luke. “See you on the inside when you're done here?”

“ _Wouldn't miss it._ ” Leia felt him push against her mind and smiled as the first wisps of the passage parted before them.

“I'll be careful,” she said. “You better be right behind me.”

*

Ben had put his helmet back on; somewhere along the way Mara had come to them with First Order uniforms, and Finn and Poe now followed them, hats pulled low over their faces. There was nothing they could do to hide Poe’s tousled curls, or the fact that the Resistance’s best ace had such a recognizable face from all the holos advertising his bounty, but she’d said that sometimes the best disguise was the simplest one, and besides, it looked less odd to others if Kylo Ren was escorting a prisoner to the cell block with a retinue of officers rather than one officer and two out-of-regulation men.

The cell block was as dismal a place as Rey could imagine. But the guards and the officer in charge came to attention when Ben swept into the intake room, pushing Rey ahead of him roughly.

“This is the scavenger who resisted me on Starkiller, and who captured me on Belsavis. I must report to the Supreme Leader before bringing her before him.”

“A cell, then—this way, Lord Ren,” the officer said, leading them deeper into the block, down a flight of metal stairs. Ben pushed her shoulder when Rey pretended to lag a bit, nearly making her fall. She glared back at him, keeping the expression in place when she felt a little mental _push_ as they passed the lone occupied cell in the block.

Two thuds from up above in the intake room made the officer pause, turning around to peer back the way they’d come. “What was that?” he asked.

“I’m sure you won’t find out,” Ben said, and Rey felt something like a cold wind rush past her, and the officer was thrown back against the stone wall and crumpled against it, unconscious. Rey used the Force to unlock her binders, and together they went back to the occupied cell and looked inside.

General Hux was curled up on a thin pallet; he’d obviously been subject to some kind of torture, blood crusted in his hair and bruises all over his pale face, but he was still present enough to wake up, register who was there, and glare daggers at Ben.

“If you could have come back on your own, why didn’t you do it and save us all the trouble of chasing you across the kriffing galaxy, you monumental fool?” he said. Rey decided that this was an acceptable response, but kept her amusement off her face.

“Because it wasn’t that easy, General.” Ben pressed a sequence into the keypad beside the glowing force field emitter and it deactivated. “Rey, the binders?”

“Oh, for the love of—what is this, Ren?”

“A rescue. You should say thank you.”

“You’re the reason I’m in here at all, my career in tatters, it all comes back to your mystic nonsense…”

“Don’t have time for this,” Rey said as Ben fastened the binders on Hux’s wrists. “If you want to live, you’d better come with us, General.”

“It appears I don’t have any other choices. I never thought you this aware of the needs of others, Ren.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, you’re going to the Resistance as a political prisoner.” They climbed the stairs to see Mara, Finn, and Poe finishing up binding the troopers’ wrists and ankles. Hux narrowed his eyes, peering at Mara.

“I know you,” he said suddenly. “You’re the signal intelligence officer from the _Finalizer._ You’re working with the Resistance?”

“Obviously.” Mara seemed to be taking his measure and not enjoying her assessment. “Are you going to be quiet, or do I have to put a gag on you?”

Hux glared at her. “You betrayed the First Order.”

“I was never a First Order officer to begin with, not at my heart. Gag or no?”

“I know when to keep my mouth shut,” Hux replied archly. 

“Ben, you’re responsible for him then, this was your idea. If he talks too much, stuff something in his mouth so he doesn’t give us away.”

“’Ben’?” Rey heard Hux mutter, but Ben was pushing Hux ahead of him now, one hand on his arm. “His name is _Ren._ ”

“Next stop, power plant,” Finn said cheerfully. “Let’s hope we don’t run into anyone else.”

*

Ben crouched behind the stack of crates, peering intently through them. Back in the corridor, his audio receptors picked up Hux saying something about more mystical bantha dung, and why did they indulge Ren’s ridiculous urges to stare at the sides of supply crates?

“Because he’s actually scanning the room with his helmet, now _be quiet_ ,” Rey told Hux. Inside the helmet, Ben’s lips twitched.

There were four technicians on three different levels inside the huge, noisy power plant that supplied Snoke’s facility and the housing facility the Knights used with energy. In the center of the room, a beam of white-hot light shot up from the emitter, several floors below, to a collector/distributor array that converted it into usable energy and sent it wherever it was needed. It crackled, made the fine hairs on his arms stand up.

It was, unfortunately, not loud enough to cover any actions he took. So he had to do something he normally found too circuitous – he had to be sneaky.

Closing his eyes, Ben reached out, his fingertips just brushing the crates ( _oh wonderful, now he’s fondling them_ Hux whispered) as he let the flow of the Force lead him to the bodies of each one of the technicians. This would have to be done with absolutely precise timing, and he turned down his audio receptors with a thought, focusing his mind back on the technicians.

He’d learned this trick early on from one of the Knights who had not survived the early days of Kylo Ren, or who perhaps had deliberately been put in the way of an emotionally unstable sixteen-year-old who had just murdered beings he’d spent years with. With Snoke, Ben was never sure. He reached into the bodies of each technician, found the appropriate nerve cluster, and _pinched_.

Four technicians on three levels dropped to the metal grating, unconscious. Ben reached deeper into them and very precisely, one at a time, tweaked a few other things that would result in them being asleep for quite some time. Then he rose and walked back to the group.

“It’s done.”

Finn and Poe went ahead, each taking half the explosives and setting them in places Mara had pointed out as being the most detrimental to continued operation. Ben hung back with Rey and Hux, who glowered at him.

“I was in prison because of you,” he said. Ben sighed, and caught Rey looking back at them for a moment before she continued scanning for any approaching presences. “I was stripped of my rank, beaten, tormented… but do you know the worst part, Ren?”

“Ben,” he corrected. “You’re going to tell me anyway, so…”

“The worst part,” Hux continued, “Was having your… your _festival_ of _murderous freaks_ on the _Finalizer_ , on _my ship._ ”

“I’m sorry about that. Really. The Knights are… difficult.”

“That’s all you have to say for me putting up with weeks of six times the idiocy? 'The Knights are _difficult_?'”

“What do you _want_ me to say?”

“Quiet, both of you,” Rey hissed, tilting her head. Ben felt her stretching out her mind and quieted as asked, but Hux wasn’t done yet. 

“What do I want? I want my ship back, I want a meal, I want my uniforms—“

“Ben,” Rey said warningly. “You'd better control him.”

“Hux, this is not the time—“

“—I want to go back in time and tell the Supreme Leader that no, I _won’t_ be welcoming his star murderer on board my ship after all, so sorry, I reconsidered it and consulted an oracle and realized that he’d just cause me years and years of migraine headaches and requisition forms for console repair after his infantile tantrums, and so it’s _perfect_ , just so _fitting_ that you’re here, Ren, continuing to drag me down into your pit with you—“

“My name is _Ben!_ ”

He reached up and waved his hand over Hux’s forehead. The General’s eyes rolled back into his head and he slumped; Ben caught him before he could hit the ground and lowered him gently, hands hooked under Hux’s arms. Rey looked back, considering their prisoner.

“You didn’t even have to tweak the second set of nerves,” she said. “I think you overdid it.”

“He makes me… irritable.” Ben caught Rey eying him appraisingly. “What?”

“It’ll keep.” Rey tilted her chin at a corridor opening that Mara was passing now, pointing out appropriate places for the charges to Poe. “There’s a technician coming down that corridor. About fifty meters.”

Ben reached out and performed the same technique on this new tech, and both he and Rey reached out again. “Got him.”

They weren’t interrupted again, and eventually the other three climbed back up to their position. Poe nudged the unconscious Hux with a toe. “What’s with him?”

“He didn’t listen.” Ben stepped back and Hux rose into the air on tendrils of Force, suspended before Ben like a gangly ginger puppet. “He’ll be out for a while. One of you can take him back to the shuttle with you, there should be something you can use to restrain him.”

“I’ve got him,” Poe said, and slung Hux over his shoulder when Ben released him. “You… be careful, Rey. Okay?”

He was looking at Rey in a strange way and so was Finn, and Ben walked away to give the three (or four) of them some privacy. Mara had also stepped away, and glanced over at him when he stopped beside her.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “It doesn’t make up for it. But. I am.”

“I wish I could believe you. I want to.” Mara shook her head; she’d freed her hair of its bun and it hung past her shoulders, tied in a neat braid. “Rey obviously trusts you.”

“We’re… linked, her and I. A Force bond. I tried to take information from her mind, but she ended up taking something from me instead. And now we can’t get rid of it.”

“Well, I don’t envy her.” 

Rey came over, her face set, her back straight. Ben could sense that she was in turmoil in her heart, that a part of her was returning to the shuttle with Poe and Finn, but she was focused on the task ahead. She had started this journey on Belsavis; she would see it through to the end.

Wordlessly, she looked at Mara, and the three of them set off across the power plant, crossing into another corridor, heading deeper into the heart of the sanctum.

*

“I still don’t really understand why we’re hauling _this_ \--“ Poe hefted the still-unconscious General Hux into a better position on his shoulders “—back with us.”

“I don’t really understand why Rey listened to, to Ben about it either.” Finn slowed, peering down a corridor; certain it was clear, they continued on. “Wonder if it’s some weird Force thing.”

“Probably, knowing them.”

They had to stop and consult Mara’s holomap of the facility a few times. The corridors were mazelike, all the same with no distinguishing marks, not even the usual First Order floor-painted directions. The doors they passed had glowing panels beside them, but they were all locked and the labels encrypted. There wasn’t time to stop and explore, anyway.

When they were a few corridors away from the hangar where they’d landed the shuttle, Finn peered around a corner, then hurriedly pushed Poe back behind the wall and gripped his blaster rifle tightly. The sound of marching booted feet got louder, and Finn pushed him again, both of them ducking into a room where the door had been torn off its track.

Not a moment later, a detachment of stormtroopers passed the entrance to the room, heading back the way Finn and Poe had come – toward the power plant.

“…intruders reported in the base,” they heard faintly, a crackling radio transmission. “May be attempting to sabotage…”

The rest of the transmission was lost as the detachment moved on, but Poe and Finn looked at each other in the dark room, wide-eyed.

_What now?_ Poe mouthed. Finn dug in the pockets of his jacket for the detonator. A quick wordless argument ensued, with Poe eventually making a face and giving in. Finn had a point, he thought; their timeline might be shot, and detonating now would definitely give away to Snoke that they were in his base, but if Mara was right he already knew and it didn’t really matter anyway.

“On three,” he whispered, curling his hand around the hand Finn held the detonator in. They would do it together. “One… two…”

*

The corridor had been sloping downward for a while. Rey could feel it in her calves and thighs, the strain of keeping up with Ben’s long strides. Touching his mind, she could sense both hesitation and urgency, as though he wanted to get this over with and yet delay it as long as possible.

“You aren’t doing this alone,” she said, jogging a bit to keep abreast of him. Mara, behind them, deliberately hung back a bit. She could sense her mother’s wariness, her distrust of Ben, but her unwavering trust in her daughter’s judgment. It was—surprisingly—bolstering.

“I didn’t think I’d ever do it,” Ben replied, his voice tight. “I didn’t think I had a choice anymore. I’m… glad you could show me I was wrong.”

Rey took his hand briefly, felt that it was warm even through the glove. “I just helped. You did all the w—“

The ground suddenly jolted under her feet, and an ominous rumble filled the air to match the movement of the floor. Pebbles, then chunks, then whole blocks of stone began to fall from the ancient ceiling.

“They’ve blown the charges early!” she heard Mara shout, just before falling stone hid her from view. Despite the danger and the huge stones still falling from the ceiling, Rey screamed for her mother and scrambled across the rockfall, digging her fingers into moss-covered stone and trying to tear it away.

“Rey—Rey! It’s too dangerous—“

“Mara!” Rey cried, visions of her mother crushed under tons of stone filling her with fear. Then, “Mother!”

Strong arms encircled her waist and hauled her bodily back from the pile of stone that nearly filled the corridor. Just in time, too—more huge stones caved in, leaving a gaping hole to the level above and absolutely no way back up the passage the way they’d come.

“Mother!” Rey screamed, struggling against Ben’s grip as he pulled her down the corridor. “Let me go, let me _go!_ She’s hurt, she—“

A muffled voice came from the other side of the cave-in. “I’m fine!” Mara shouted. Faint banging noises followed this, followed by the crunch of stone. “I’m okay! Are you okay?”

Rey broke free and went back to trying to pull on the stones, but they were too heavy, and the more small stones she pulled on the more the rest shifted to fill in the hole. “We’re all right, we’ve got to clear this—“ 

She had her lightsaber in hand when Mara shouted back. “No, go on!”

“But—“

“What you’re going to do is more important than me! I’ll be fine, I’ll keep working on making a pathway through. If I succeed, I’ll join you.”

Rey rested her forehead on a stone, tears stinging her eyes. “I don’t want to leave you behind,” she said.

There was a pause. “I know, Rey,” Mara replied, her voice gentle. “But you’ve got a task to accomplish. I’ll be _fine._ I’ll be right here when you come back, sweetheart, do you hear me?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, nodded. “Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

The sounds of shifting rock began again, and Rey stepped back. There was only one way for them to go now.

“Come on,” she said hoarsely to Ben. “Let’s finish this.”

*

The hangar had a few troopers hanging about when they got to it. They were all obviously shaken after the explosions, torn between running back to their transports or taking up defensive positions. Finn and Poe arriving with their unconscious General made up their minds. As soon as the blasterfire started, they were forced to find cover behind a pile of supply crates.

Poe let Hux drop unceremoniously to the floor, pulling out his blaster. The shuttle was only fifty yards away but with the stormtroopers between them and the ship and with better cover, it may as well have been across the galaxy.

“Now what?” he asked again for the second time in ten minutes.

Finn crouched, firing off shots with his blaster rifle resting on top of one of the crates. It _really_ wasn’t the right time to be admiring the way Finn’s eyes narrowed in concentration, each shot precise and calculated. He ducked back down. “I can try to use the Force, or something,” he said. He didn’t sound sure.

“Will it blow something up if you try?”

“I don’t know, maybe?”

“Let’s try something else first.” Poe took a few shots of his own. One went wide, streaking toward the shuttle—but was deflected away, much to his surprise, until he grinned.

“BB-8! I told it to stay with the shuttle! Quick, your commlink—“

He reached across Finn’s hips when the other man rose up to take his shots, grabbing the commlink off his belt and thumbing it on. “BB-8! You there, buddy?”

A series of affirmative whistles came back after a moment. _I am here, friend-Poe. Where is friend-Rey? Where is—_

“I’ll fill you in later! Can you activate and fire the shuttle’s weaponry systems? Take out those troopers pinning us down?”

_It will be easy, friend-Poe. Is friend-Rey safe?_

“I don’t know,” Poe said quietly. A sad beep came back. “I’m sure she’ll be with us soon. The weapons, BB-8! Quick! And lower the ramp as soon as I signal you!”

From under one of the wing-bases, a blaster lowered from its slot and pointed at the backs of the troopers. It fired, a burst of red light, and the troopers went flying, landing across the hangar and going very still. The ramp was already lowering as Finn broke cover and ran for it, and Poe sighed before grabbing Hux and hauling him along too.

“You’d better give us some damn good information,” he told the unconscious general as he struggled up the ramp after Finn. “We’re on board, BB-8, good job. Raise the ramp.”

_What about friend-Rey? What about unknown quantity?_

“Unknown—what?”

_Friend-Rey designated Ben._

Poe watched as the hangar slid out of view, the ramp raising and locking in place. “I’m sure they’ll both make it back just fine,” he said. _I hope they will._

*

The corridor ended in a set of doors, devoid of any ornamentation. Rey stood before them, her skin prickling uncomfortably.

“This is it,” she said unnecessarily.

Ben had removed his helmet, setting it carefully on the floor. She could feel his own queasiness, hear the echo of his thoughts that the voice that had always been with him, the reason he hadn’t felt alone as a child even as he was slowly isolated from his family, would be silenced after today. She felt, too, his doubt about that outcome, his fear that Snoke was too powerful, too old and canny to be defeated even by them.

“This is it,” he echoed. Together, they stretched out their hands, gripping the leaves of the door in the Force.

The doors opened, and they walked through.

Snoke’s inner sanctum was not dark and musty, and Rey wasn’t sure why she’d imagined it that way in the first place. It was dim, to be sure, but every crevice was lit at least somewhat by glow panels, cleverly hidden inside and behind the columns that held up the ceiling. At the end of the hall, a giant throne, and a giant man.

“So at last, you come before me,” Snoke said, and his voice was the rumble of thunder in the distance. Rey felt cold.

They came to a stop at the end of the polished stone pathway between the door and the dais the giant throne rested on. Rey had to crane her neck to look up defiantly into Snoke’s eyes, though when she did she felt fear grip her heart and hold tight. Snoke’s face was scarred and terrible, and his eyes were dark and full not of hate, but of ruthless pragmatism, as though the world was a set of scales and he weighed each thing in it against some unknown measure. That relentless cold… that was what she feared.

“You’ve brought the scavenger. Even in your defiance, you obey me, Kylo Ren.”

“That’s not who I am anymore,” Ben said. But Rey heard the quiver in his voice, the way the tenuous foundation he’d built up had begun to crumble the moment he’d set foot in the chamber. She reached out along their bond to give him strength.

“On the contrary, it’s who you’ve _always_ been. Or do you wish to revert back to the weak child I rescued from a life of insignificance—“

“Shut _up!_ ” Rey stepped in front of her cousin, her lightsaber already gripped in her hand, her mind rippling outward in widening circles—then she narrowed her eyes further. “At least show yourself, your _true_ self.”

“Rey, don’t,” Ben whimpered behind her. Fear rolled off him.

Snoke smiled at her, amused. “The scavenger is as formidable as you claimed on Starkiller,” he said to Ben, who shook like a leaf. “No wonder she defeated you.”

“I told you—“ Rey began, but then the hologram faded, and a tall, robed being walked out of the shadows behind it.

“Your name is Rey,” Snoke said, no less terrifying in corporeal form. His voice did not echo quite so powerfully, but now it carried something else, some quality that made her knees threaten to give out. “Rey, daughter of Skywalker. Heir to that line steeped equally in darkness and light, and with an even greater capacity than your cousin. _You_ are who I ought to have put my effort into. Your cousin is a fine blunt instrument, but you… with you, I could have had _everything_. In fact… I offer it to you.” He held out a hand, a nasty look of expectation on his face. 

Something inside Ben broke.

He shoved past her, his lightsaber a red streak in the dim light as he rushed at Snoke. “ _I won’t let you have her!_ ” he screamed, raw and afraid. “I won’t let you! I _won’t!_ ”

Ben raised his lightsaber, about to strike—and froze in place, trembling. Snoke had barely twitched a finger and yet Rey could almost see the invisible hands gripping Ben, keeping him from moving a muscle, barely allowing him to breathe at all. His teeth ground in his jaw as he tried to fight against it, but with Snoke so close, he was too distracted, unable to find his focus.

Rey thought of her outcrop of rock and found that place in his mind, pouring herself into it, reaching out across the storm-whipped waters and _making_ them calm with the force of her will. 

_Focus_ , she thought, and _pushed_. And Ben was able to move again.

He finished his swing, but Snoke had moved inhumanly fast, his robe fluttering as he appeared suddenly behind Rey. She struggled, but Ben reached out, pouring strength back into her, and she was able to bring her lightsaber and will up in time to deflect the ball of ugly purple energy he threw at her. It made her fingers tingle where they gripped the hilt of her weapon tightly, and her hair prickled up on end, but she held out, and then Ben was rushing forward, his red blade flashing as he blocked Snoke’s attacks.

Snoke, for his part, didn’t even seem winded; indeed, it felt more like he was toying with them, assessing what they could do and how they responded. “I gave you so much, boy,” he hissed as he swatted Ben away, sending him tumbling across the floor. “I _made_ you. And this is how you repay me, that kindly voice who took pity on a lonely child? You aren’t even able to _touch_ me.”

“I was a _child_ ,” Ben choked out, getting to his feet. “I was alone, and you _invaded_ me!”

“I don’t go where I’m not _wanted_ , Kylo Ren.”

“I’m _Ben!_ ” It was through sheer force of will that Ben was able to take Snoke by surprise, slicing through one voluminous sleeve and grazing the grave-pale flesh underneath, eliciting a roar of pain. For this Ben was thrown back against a column, sliding down it with a dazed look on his face.

With a cry Rey ran to him, shaking him out of his stupor, pushing Force into him until his eyes cleared. Suddenly he jerked his arm up, lightsaber coming dangerously close to her back until he pulled her close against him, and the ball of energy that Snoke had lobbed at them fizzled itself out against the ceiling.

As the minutes dragged on, their dual attack-and-fade moves only landing minor blows (if they connected at all), Rey felt a creeping hopelessness take root in her. Ben was feeling it too, struggling against the sand dunes as a storm raged in the desert and a hurricane tossed the sea, his energy and his will to fight back against Snoke’s mental attacks flagging.

Because the physical wasn’t the only plane this battle was being fought on; Rey found her mind assaulted, her will picked at by a thousand black fingernails, nasty voices whispering to her that she’d never be more than that barely-surviving scavenger girl on Jakku no matter what pretensions she wrapped herself in and did she really think she was a Jedi, she’d rejected her destiny and only taken it up because nobody else would, after all… 

She was alone, and the sands of the desert shifted under her boots. Dunes stretched out, as far as she could see, and when she flung her mind out, desperately reaching for Ben or Finn or anyone, she couldn't find them, she was alone, she was abandoned—

“Get out of my head,” she ground out once when she and Snoke were face to face. “Get out of my head and get out of Ben’s head and _stay out._ ”

“Oh, I’m not even trying to take him.” Snoke smiled at her, and with his twisted face it was a horror show. “It doesn’t take any effort at all to slip into a place that’s already been made for you.”

Ben, white as a sheet save for spots of high color on his cheeks, his skin glistening with sweat, charged in to break Snoke’s spell on her. Snoke flung out a hand and Ben’s hands went to his throat as he rose up off the ground, the toes of his boots just scraping the stones. She felt his panic, felt the hurricane grow ever more intense.

“Such a waste of time,” Snoke said, in a voice that was almost tender, full of false regret. “You were such a lovely child. I had high hopes for you… should have discarded you when you became unstable, focused my attention on more malleable prospects.”

He pinched his fingers, and the place where Ben was in her mind went suddenly blank.

“Let him _go!_ ” Rey cried, fear filling her. Her arm reached outward, a wave of pure Force rippling off her body and managing to knock Snoke’s concentration off enough that he stumbled back and released Ben. Her cousin crumpled to the floor, bruises already darkening his throat. Rage, white-hot and bracing, filled her.

She surged forward and Snoke was driven back by the raw emotion in her attacks. They struck out and parried each other’s attacks, weaving in and out of the columns. After her initial surprising attack, Snoke fought back, matching her blow for blow. Something in his touch burned, and when they had come back to the dais and the throne and Ben, barely a flicker in the back of her mind, he grabbed her wrists, keeping her from slicing at him with her lightsaber. His skin was ice and it felt like frost was crawling up her veins, eradicating the desert, dimming the light within her as though it was being buried deep.

Their battle was one of wills now, Force and mind straining against each other. Rey looked into those cold eyes and felt her heart shriveling.

“You’ll never get him back,” she ground out, talking to keep herself focused, remind herself why she was fighting – it was getting harder to remember that, just now. “You’ll never take him.”

“Is that all you care about? This man? He would have killed you without a thought.”

“He’s not your thing anymore! He’s not Kylo Ren!”

“Perhaps not.” Snoke leaned forward, and Rey had to fight to keep herself from flinching back. “You want to protect your cousin from me? You want to make sure your friends—your _lovers_ , your family—stay safe? I can guarantee them protection. I will withdraw from Ben’s mind, I will leave the rest alone, if you promise yourself to me.”

_Just give in,_ the nasty dark voices whispered. And, for a terrifying moment, Rey considered it, how easy it would be. All the people she cared about safe, protected, and all it would take was one word to do it.

“ _I will not be your slave,_ ” she snarled, and _pushed._

Snoke staggered back, and in her current state Rey couldn’t tell if it was a feint or not. All she could see, all her gaze had narrowed to, was that he was flagging, his apparently limitless strength beginning to be sapped by the kind of prolonged fight he probably hadn’t had to engage in for many years. All she could see was a pale throat, a pulse jumping in it, bared as Snoke lay dazed before her. Her skin stung where he’d held it, but she could grasp her lightsaber, ignite it, stalk forward to stand over this _creature_ that had caused her and her family and those she loved so much pain.

Snoke was watching her as she raised her weapon. “Do it,” he said, a rictus grin splitting his face. “Kill me.”

In the back of her mind, the place that was _Ben_ fluttered, a small flame slowly rising. 

And in her ear, someone whispered, _Be still._

The chamber faded away for a moment. _Be still?_ Rey thought. _I can end this! I can kill Snoke, stop the First Order, it’s what I was meant to do!_

_Not you alone,_ the voice replied. It was accompanied by a soothing, cooling brush against her mind, a glow that spread out from her heart. _We never wanted you to be alone. Be still, for we are with you, child._

Rey was filled with a sudden certainty. In her mind, she saw how it would happen. She saw what she had to do.

Rey looked Snoke in the eye, and shut off her lightsaber.

*

To Ben, just coming round, it was something out of one of his nightmares.

Snoke picked Rey up in the Force, pulled her close so he could whisper something as she dangled, choking. His lightsaber – discarded when he’d been choked – rose into the air, igniting. And then, in slow motion, Ben watched as Snoke ran her through with it.

It wasn’t a killing blow. Kylo Ren had memorized those, the stabs that would instantly end the life of anyone who was stupid enough to stand against him. It hadn’t worked, because his father had lived long enough to brush his fingers against his son’s cheek, and that last caress was the first of many cracks that had been put in Kylo Ren before the end. No, this was a wound meant to make her suffer, let her continue to draw breath as Snoke did something that would break her spirit before the end.

_Be still,_ a voice whispered to him, and for some reason, Ben obeyed, when all he wanted to do was _move._

_Be still, for we are with you._

Almost carelessly, Snoke flung Rey across the room. She was already unconscious before she landed, something in her shoulder crunching when she hit the floor and slid to a stop.

Somehow unaware that Ben was awake, Snoke walked over, surveyed this terrible handiwork of his for a moment, then swept past them on his way back to his throne. In Ben's line of sight, Rey’s lightsaber – the weapon that had rejected him on Starkiller – gleamed. It had rolled out of Rey’s fingers when she’d hit the floor. Unclenching his fingers Ben stretched out in the Force, hoping, needing—

The lightsaber rose in the air and, soundlessly, flew straight into his hand.

At the throne, Snoke had depressed a button with one long finger. “Captain Phasma,” he said, “Report.”

By some miracle (and rather judicious use of the Force) Ben got to his feet without alerting Snoke. Calm had filled him, the storm of his mind given way to sun. It was light and heat and warmth that burned away the dark void, leaving it in tatters; it gave him strength enough to ignore the pain that came when he drew on the Force, the result of prolonged use and mental strain. It deadened his steps, gave him the ability to draw silent breaths despite the ache in his throat. 

“ _Reporting, Supreme Leader._ ”

“Send your division down to the surface. There is a command shuttle in the main hangar bay, the _Lachryma_ , that has two Resistance fighters and Hux inside it. Capture them, but kill them if they fight back.”

“ _Supreme Leader, an armada of ships has appeared in Sanctuary space—they’ve gotten past the entrance and are harrying our TIE squadrons. What are your orders regarding them?_ ”

Snoke was silent a moment, then snarled. “Organa,” he hissed. “That meddling fool has to be dealt with. I will kill her myse—“

He did not get to finish, because Ben had ignited the lightsaber in his hands, and Snoke no longer had a heart in his body.

“You won’t touch my family again,” Ben gasped, twisting the hilt of the lightsaber so the blade described a circle inside Snoke’s body, jerking against it. “You won’t touch me.” Then, more quietly: “I’m finally free.”

He pulled the blade out and Snoke crumpled to the floor of the dais. The void in Ben’s mind was gone, nothing but the shadows it had cast left. But, he thought giddily, he could deal with the shadows. He hoped. If he lived long enough, anyway. Death, now, wouldn’t be so bad.

A groan behind him made him turn—too fast, he was dizzy with blood loss and pure exhaustion, he nearly blacked out – and close down the lightsaber, clipping it to his belt. Ben stumbled off the dais and half-ran, half-crawled to where Rey was stirring. Her shirt and vest were soaked in blood too, her skin scraped and torn, there were some kind of strange burns on her wrists, but there was still light and life in her eyes when she opened them, and that made him glad. She had people who loved her, she had a family. Rey needed to live and experience the things he’d taken from her. It could be his first and last gift to her.

“Is it,” she whispered, when he put an arm under her shoulders. “Is it done?”

“It’s done. He’s gone.”

As though the words had been some kind of trigger, the ground shook ominously under them. This was no explosion shockwave; this was something deeper, something more terrifying. He mustered the energy to extend his senses out, and…

“The planetoid,” he rasped. “It’s breaking apart.”

Rey seemed to accept this, her eyes fluttering shut. Ben shook her back awake, and her brow crumpled as she watched him sweep his cowl off and press it against the hole in her abdomen, wrapping it tightly to put pressure on the wound.

“I’m so tired.”

“You can’t sleep yet.”

The shaking made it hard, but Ben got to his feet and used the Force to lift her (it hurt, oh, it hurt, but it was such a good and welcome pain that he didn’t mind) into his arms. For a moment he thought of Takodana and almost laughed at how completely things had changed.

He gave Snoke’s corpse one last, long look. _Let him stay here,_ he thought savagely. _Let him rot, like the rest of us._ And he turned and left.

Rey was silent, shuddering in his arms as he struggled out of the chamber, through the doors at the far end that had been knocked askew in the groundquakes. There was barely enough room for him to squeeze his broad shoulders through, and he had to negotiate very carefully with Rey in his arms. He passed his helmet, and did not look back at it as he left it behind.

The rockfall presented more of a problem. He tried calling out to Mara, but his throat was so badly abused that he couldn’t manage more than a wheezy grunt, and finally he laid Rey down at the base of the pile of stone and climbed up to the next level, then used the Force again, lifting her up and carrying her over to the wall, where they both lay against it.

Rey stirred beside him. “Did you think it would end like this?” she asked. “For you?”

Ben stared at a widening crack on the wall that bled pebbles as the ground shook violently, the breakup of the planet imminent. “You’re a bit of a surprise.”

Rey managed a breathy laugh. That was good, he thought. It meant she still had strength in her.

“It isn’t your end, Rey.”

She huffed a laugh again, watching as he used the wall to brace himself as he stood. “Don’t think that’s up to you, Ben.”

“Stop talking like that.” Ben’s fingers left red streaks on the wall; it was her blood, he thought. She needed that. He lifted her up into his arms again and she leaned against him, a smile on her face.

“I’m glad it’s you,” she told him. “I’m glad you’re here with me now. You’ll tell them? Ben? You’ll tell them I love them?”

Her mind was full of light and love for her pilot, her soldier. Ben wasn’t jealous of them anymore. But they needed to get off the planet before it broke up completely. Or at least, Rey needed to. If this was his last act, delivering her to those who loved her, Ben would accept his fate without question.

*

Phasma heard the choking sound over her helmet comm and was glad, once again, that she had not broadcast this on the comm console at her station. Her blood chilled as she heard Kylo Ren’s—or whoever he was now—words, faint and barely picked up by the audio receiver on Snoke’s comm unit.

Slowly, methodically, Phasma shut off her comm. She didn’t need to hear any more to know what she had to do.

“Comms,” she called, marching over to the console. The officer was young, shaken; the battle raging around the _Finalizer_ was overwhelming, sorting the signals and listening to the dying screams, Phasma knew what it was like. 

“Yes, sir?”

“Broadcast a message on all frequencies until you are acknowledged by one of the Resistance ships,” she said, and removed her helmet. 

There was a moment of shocked silence on the bridge, only punctuated by the distant noises of a ship in battle. Phasma never removed her helmet outside her personal quarters or her division office. Doing so now communicated, unequivocally, the importance of what she was about to do.

“This is Captain Jes Phasma, ranking officer on board the New Order flagship _Finalizer_ ,” she said, calm and steady. “I wish to surrender to the highest-ranking Resistance official present in local space. There are no conditions to the surrender of this ship.”

She set the mic back down and waited. Two minutes later, a woman came on the comm.

“ _This is Resistance General Leia Organa. I accept your surrender._ ”

*

“There—there! Finn!”

He looked out the viewport just long enough to see Ben, carrying a limp Rey in his arms, stumble against the arch of the blast doors leading into the hangar as a particularly strong groundquake shook the planetoid. Poe had been monitoring the sensor readings and had been growing increasingly worried.

“If they aren’t back soon, we’ve got to go look for them.”

Mara, who had stumbled out into the hangar covered in stone dust and cursing enough to make _Poe_ blush, had made Finn’s heart drop to the planetoid core. But she’d said she was separated from them, that they were fine and had gone on to face Snoke… and then, later still, brilliant light had blossomed in his mind, and deep down, Finn had _known._ His eyes met Mara’s, sitting in one of the passenger seats, and she’d just smiled at him.

“It’s done,” she whispered.

And then they’d waited.

Finn slapped the controls for the ramp as Poe brought up the repulsors. The groundquakes were getting bad enough to endanger the integrity of the shuttle. Finn held on to one of the struts as Poe deftly maneuvered the shuttle toward the back of the hangar, getting him closer to where Ben was swaying dangerously, Rey clutched in his arms like treasure.

“Is she—is she alive?” he shouted. Ben looked haunted, but he smiled, red-rimmed eyes glinting out from messy dark hair. 

“She’s alive!” he said, and stumbled toward the ramp. The hangar floor was no longer polished to a high sheen; it had been scorched by blaster fire, scraped by rock, and was now cracked in places. As Finn watched, horrified, a chunk dropped out entirely just as Ben was about to step onto it. He reeled back, clutching Rey to his chest, and navigated around it, leaping to safety just as the floor under his feet gave way too. 

“Here!” Ben shouted, and Finn stepped forward to take Rey out of his arms. “Get her to the med suite—I’ll hang on—“

Finn hesitated, but Ben made a gesture with his hand, clutching on to the hull of the shuttle, and Finn turned and ran up to meet Mara inside the passenger compartment. The older woman blanched when she peeled back the black cowl and saw the gaping hole, but gamely helped Finn lay her gently on the narrow med suite pallet that slid out from the wall.

“I’ll hook her up, you get Ben,” Mara told him. Her fingers fluttered against Rey's cheek, but her voice was steady.

Ben was still clutching the hull when Finn made his way back. “Come on,” he said, holding out a hand. 

“Is Rey—“

“She’s safe, she’s inside. Come on, take my hand!”

Ben let go of the shuttle, reached out—and the ground dropped out from beneath his feet.

Finn scrambled forward, grasping for him, feeling rough-woven black cloth run through his fingers as Ben fell, the hangar floor now several feet lower than before as it shook and crumbled. “Poe! I need to get closer!”

“If I get any closer we’ll be crushed too!” 

Finn looked back at Ben, and saw something in the other man’s eyes. It was… he didn’t like it. It was almost a beatific acceptance, the look of a man who knew death had come for him and wasn’t afraid of it any longer. 

“Go,” Ben said, his gloved fingers digging into exposed rock. “Take Rey and go. I don’t matter as much as she does.”

“I’m bad at listening to orders,” Finn replied, and stretched out his hand.

They were separated by so much empty space, but it wasn’t a physical touch Finn used. He grasped Ben in the Force, the way that Rey had at the lake, wrapped him in woven strands of it and pulled him up out of the crevasse just as the piece of floor Ben had stood on fell away. Finn pulled again, and Ben flew toward him, Finn extending his arms to catch him and cushion his fall as they both hit the deck of the shuttle.

“Got him!” Finn wheezed. “Close up, get us out of here, Poe!”

“You got it, buddy.”

The ramp rose and enclosed them safely inside. Ben rolled off Finn, staring at him strangely.

“You rescued me,” he said.

“I owed you one. We’re even now.”

Ben smiled foggily. “That’s good,” he mumbled, then seemed to gather his remaining strength and crawl up onto his hands and knees, clutching the side of the antechamber. His hands left red streaks behind on the slate gray walls, all over the floor, stumbling up into the passenger cabin.

“What in the seven hells happened to _you?_ ” Hux demanded. He was strapped into one of the jump seats and took in Ben’s appearance with an expression of incredible distaste.

“I killed Snoke.” Ben ignored Hux’s sudden shift from _disgust_ to _alarmed disbelief_ and dropped to his knees beside Rey’s head, reaching up to stroke her hair. 

“Live,” he whispered, and then he keeled over into a heap.

They eventually wrestled him onto a second med suite pallet, Mara grumbling that she’d had to go without using the Force for so long that she had all the ability of an infant. Hux, blissfully, was silent, his eyes wide, watching as they hooked Ben up to the monitors, started a drip of fluids, and did their best with the limited supplies to clean and bind the worst of his wounds with gauze and bacta patches.

“General Organa says she’s glad to see we’re alive, and that we’re all in for a hell of a dressing-down when she gets hold of us,” Poe said grimly when Mara and Finn returned to the cockpit. Mara snorted.

“You still have her on the line?”

“Yeah, channel four—“

Mara grabbed the mic and leaned in. “Leia,” she said. “These kids did the impossible. Cut ‘em some slack, will you?”

There was a long pause, and when the line went live again, it wasn’t Leia on the other side. “ _Mara?_ ” Luke said, almost as though he didn’t believe who it was he was talking to. “ _Is that you?_ ”

“You’d better believe it’s me, Skywalker. If anyone’s going to get a dressing down here, it’s you, because how _dare_ you harp about keeping Rey safe and then let her _waltz_ into Snoke’s stronghold with her murdering cousin and a couple of moon jockeys for backup?”

“ _We didn’t want her to go,_ ” Luke said. He sounded rather faint.

“She’s got your kriffing blood in her, farmboy, you should have known she’d pull a stunt like this.”

“Hey,” Finn said, “We helped.” Mara shushed him.

“ _She’s got your blood in her too,_ ” Luke replied. Mara paused, but there was a gleam in her eyes and a tilt to her lips that made Finn and Poe relax.

“Too right she does,” Mara said quietly. “You guys bring any capital ships or is it all this motley fleet? We have two very wounded kids on board and they need more than this shuttle’s limited med suites.”

“ _They’re outside the Sanctuary, holding the entrance._ ” Leia had apparently taken the mic back from her brother. “ _Mara… how bad?_ ”

“Bad enough. We’ll lead the way. Shuttle _Lachryma_ out.”

Mara sat back for a moment, but restlessly got up and returned to the passenger compartment, presumably to hover next to her daughter. Finn moved into the copilot’s seat, reaching for Poe’s shoulder and gripping it hard.

“She’ll be all right,” Poe murmured, his eyes on the nebulous path ahead. “She’s strong, our girl, our Rey. She’ll be all right.”

*

As soon as the shuttle had landed the medical teams had swarmed on board, moving Rey and Ben to stretchers and rushing them off to the much more comprehensive medical bay on board the _Haven_ , one of the donated capital ships. 

Luke had followed them into the hangar, but had frozen in place when Rey had been pushed past him. For those few seconds his heart had stoppped completely; she was bloodless pale and her clothes were soaked with blood from a huge wound on her side. She wasn't moving, and even though his hesitant probe in the Force returned her life presence, it was so faint and small that he feared even the wind raised by them rushing her to treatment would snuff it out. 

Another presence tickled the back of his mind, and he turned, and that was when he saw her. She had dyed her hair dark brown, she had a few more lines on her face, but there she was, forever turning his head.

Mara met his eyes, and for a moment there was a flicker of emotion in her green eyes, a soft relieved joy at seeing him... and then her expression became exasperated and she jogged past him, following in their daughter's wake.

Luke closed his eyes. He hadn't really expected her to come leaping into his arms, but this was almost worse than outright hostility.

_In her defense,_ he thought. _I did deserve it, for thinking she'd be okay with inaction._

After the stretchers came a young man, proud and straight-backed even though he was wearing the dirty remnants of what must have been a uniform and was covered in bruises and small cuts. He only turned his head once, to look after the medical team pushing Ben's stretcher away, but otherwise had the air of someone going exactly where he meant to go. And just like that, Luke was alone.

He debated for a good hour before he made his way to the medical bay and found it full of activity. The ship had only one surgical suite and Rey was in it now, droids and medical personnel swarming over her.

“It went clean through her.”

He looked over to see Mara standing in front of the glass on the other side of the suite's doorway. She didn't look at him; her eyes were focused on their daughter, clinging stubbornly to life on the table inside.

“The blood is from where movement opened up the cauterized tissue,” she continued. Her voice was falsely calm, but below it – and he only heard it because he knew her so well – there was a tremor. “If she hadn't moved it wouldn't be so bad, but obviously they couldn't come get her, so...”

Luke deliberated but edged over anyway. They were a foot apart, but he may as well have been across the galaxy. “I couldn't have stopped her, even if I'd known what she was planning with the others,” he said. “She thought... she felt like it was something that she and Ben had to do. And they did it.”

“But will it be worth her life?” Mara crossed her arms. “What does it matter to me that Snoke is dead if Rey... if... I don't want to have just gotten her back only to lose her again, Luke.”

“I know.” He was quiet, watching as the medical staff and the droids carefully excised charred tissue, grafted newly-synthesized sections back in. It made his stomach clench uncomfortably – not because of the blood, but because that was his daughter, _their_ daughter on that table. “I made a mistake.”

Mara snorted. “I'd say.”

“No, I mean. Not just hiding her on Jakku. But not telling her when she found me again. I looked into her eyes and it was... the words were there, but I couldn't speak them. I was afraid she'd blame me. I mean, she did, but... I just wanted to be near her.”

Mara closed her eyes, one hand coming up to cover her mouth. “Sometimes, Skywalker, you're such an _idiot._ ”

“It runs in the family.” Luke watched as one of the droids broke off to tend to the smaller cuts on Rey's scalp. After a few minutes, he spoke again. “She grew up to be a lot like you. Smart, strong, quick thinking...”

“And she got your tendency to stubbornly pursue what she thinks is the right thing.”

“I don't think that's a particularly bad thing...”

“It's not. It's just an observation.” Mara bit her lip, watching the monitors inside as Rey's vitals began to stabilize. “She got your faith in people, too. I think that's the greatest gift she could have gotten.”

They fell silent again after that. At some point, Mara reached out, her fingers slipping against his palm, and that was how they stood when the droid floated out through the sterile field.

“She's been stabilized,” the droid said. “There was extensive damage to her abdomen at the point of entry, but we've repaired the damage with tissue synthesized from her own cells, and when we reach Ryloth we'll be able to start her sessions in a Bacta tank; for now, we've packed the wound and surrounding area with Bacta and will continue to monitor it and her.”

“She's going to be all right?”

“We're keeping her in a medical coma so her body has time to rest, but yes, we believe she will make a full recovery. Further evaluation should be done by Doctor Kalonia to be certain of this prognosis.”

“Will we be able to sit with her? After she's brought out?”

“Of course. I'll have a notification sent to you as soon as it's permitted.”

The droid went back into the surgical suite and Mara turned to face him. Her free hand went up to cup his face, thumb brushing his cheekbone.

“I'm still not sold on the beard, farmboy,” she murmured, and gave him a slight smile before she left.

*

Ben only woke once during the trip, very briefly. He’d been placed in a medical suite on board… he wasn’t sure. It wasn’t the shuttle, it was some other ship, something with a more sophisticated arrangement. His throat was wrapped in something thick and cooling, and his robes had been stripped off and replaced, once more, with tan scrubs.

_I left my lightsaber on the planetoid,_ he thought. He didn’t care.

He turned his head slightly to one side and saw Rey, also in tan scrubs. She looked worse than he did, her golden desert tan completely subsumed by an alarming pallor that made his stomach churn uneasily. The side of her tunic was distended, presumably by thick bandages and bacta patches; whatever kind of ship they were on, it obviously wasn’t sophisticated enough to have a bacta tank on board. But she was alive, and when he stretched out in his mind, he felt her life. Weak, but growing stronger. 

_Good_ , Ben thought. _That’s good._

He turned his head to the other side and saw Hux, sitting up on the medical pallet he’d been placed on. He wasn’t nearly as badly injured, but he’d been tortured, and it wouldn’t do to have a political prisoner of the New Republic look like he’d been beaten by them. Hux, Ben noticed, was looking at Ben out of the corner of his eye, and pretending he wasn’t. A pressure against his senses prompted Ben to reach further, and he realized Hux had been watching him for some time and was quite irritated.

Ben closed his eyes again, and knew nothing more.

*

She was floating, suspended in warmth and light. Rey let it fill her, and felt peace.

The transition to wakefulness was gradual, and when she realized it was happening she didn't want to leave. She didn't want to leave the light.

_We will always be here,_ the voices whispered, and she smiled to hear them again. _When you need us, find us within your heart._

Rey opened her eyes, and heard someone move beside her. She tried to sit up, but her body felt heavy, and hands pressed down on her arm.

“Shh, don't move just yet,” someone said. Voices fuzzed out at the edge of her mind and Rey drifted again. The hands had slid down, curling around her fingers. When she floated back up they were still there.

“Wuh...” she tried, her eyes fluttering open. The blank ceiling of a module. Ryloth, she was back on Ryloth. “Water?”

“Hang on.” That was Luke—that was her father. She felt one of the hands leave her arm, heard fuzzy voices that seemed impossibly far away. Her father's hand returned, sliding under her shoulders as a straw bumped against her lips. “Little sips, Doctor Kalonia says. You haven't actually ingested food or water in three days.”

Rey forced herself not to suck greedily at the straw, rationing the water in small sips. It helped her regain focus, brought the world back into sharper definition, and she was at last able to move her head a little. To one side, Luke and Mara—her father and mother, returned to her, Rey thought with a sudden swirl of happiness—with Mara holding one of her hands. On the other side... and her smile widened at this, because she hadn't been sure she'd ever see them again when Snoke had used Ben's lightsaber to run her through. On her other side were Finn and Poe, relief plain in their minds and faces. Poe reached over and slipped his fingers into the spaces between hers, and Rey squeezed it as best she could. 

“I've been out for three days?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse, and every inhale tasted faintly medicinal. She'd been in a bacta tank.

“Three and a half, technically.” Finn reached out, hesitated—images of Mara disapproving in a physical way flitting through his mind before he pushed them aside and stroked a lock of hair back from her face. Rey leaned into his fingers and he smiled.

“You have a very nice smile, Finn,” she said.

“Clearly the pain medication's—“

“No, she's telling the truth.” Mara gave the two younger men a wry smile. “The medication just helps it come out.”

Finn's fingers didn't move from where they'd ended up tucked under her cheek. “No, you've been unconscious since—uh, Ben, brought you out of Snoke's stronghold. He's still unconscious too, but the doctor thinks he'll wake up soon. The General says his injuries are more... that most of them didn't leave marks.”

Rey nodded, her eyes half-shut. Somehow, she'd not even thought to ask about Ben. She'd known the moment she'd woken up that he was alive. “Water,” she said again, and the straw came back. 

“Is there anything else you need, sweetheart?” Mara asked gently, after Rey had taken a few more sips.

Rey thought about this question, half-formed requests meandering through her head. Somewhere in the middle of it she fell asleep again.

*

Someone was calling out to him as he slept.

It wasn't... like before, he thought. It didn't feel the same. Instead of an inexorable pull downward, the call was lifting him, supporting him with gentle hands and soothing words.

_It's time to wake up, Ben,_ the light said, and he opened his eyes.

It was nighttime, or at least, the room lighting was cycled that way. Lights glowed beside each bed, illuminating the beings asleep within them, or sitting up talking quietly to visitors. The one beside his bed let him see the woman sitting at his side, her head pillowed on his forearm. His hand felt warm, too, and he realized that it was because she was holding his hand. 

Ben's mouth was dry, his voice a croak when he tried to speak, but he was at least audible. “Mother?”

Leia sat upright with a jolt, her eyes instantly focused on him. “Ben?” she whispered, her mouth curving up into a small smile. “I'm so glad you came home.”

He freed his hand. It seemed like a huge effort to do so but he lifted it, his fingers brushing his mother's cheek. A year ago, he'd felt Han Solo's—his _father's_ —fingers trail over his cheek, lit from below by red. He wanted to remember the gesture differently this time. 

Leia tilted her cheek, covering his hand with her own. “You've done so well,” she continued. “I'm so proud of you. Your father... he'd be proud, too.”

It hurt, Ben thought. But it was good that it did.

“Snoke's dead,” he whispered. “I killed him.” That was a different kind of pain.

“I know. I felt it, when you did.” Leia took his hand off her cheek, holding it in both her small ones like it was precious beyond value. “The galaxy can breathe again.”

A dozen different things ran through his mind, but what came out was, “I'm sorry, Mother. I'm so sorry.”

Her hands closed around his. “There'll be time enough for that later. I want you to get well, get strong again. Then we'll talk.” She kissed his fingertips, and a foggy memory of her doing something similar when he was a child going to bed floated to the top of his mind. It was a comforting gesture, something that said _home_ and _belonging_.

Doctor Kalonia arrived with a cup in her hand. “I see our other one's awake,” she said briskly. “Can you sit up?”

With his mother's help, Ben managed to get his head and shoulders elevated enough to drink from the cup. It was just water, but as he drank his mother said he'd been in something like a coma since they'd left the Sanctuary. He wondered if it had something to do with the aching, gaping hole in his mind where there had always been a presence. That was what seemed the most likely.

“Rey?” he asked, but he was already reaching out in his mind. Rey was asleep, but it was a natural sleep. The stormtrooper—Finn, he reminded himself firmly, Finn, who had saved his life in spite of everything—sat beside her. She was just beyond the curtain separating his bed from the next, and Ben closed his eyes as he took another sip of water. That was good. She had lived, and so had he, even when he hadn't meant to.

“She's strong, she's on the mend. She woke up for a few minutes earlier today, but it'll be a bit longer for her to recover.”

“S'good.” He finished the water and Leia took the cup, refilling it from a pitcher. “I'll put this here for you, if you wake up thirsty,” she said. He could sense she was trying not to cry, that she didn't want to leave, that she wanted any excuse to stay with this, her son, the child she'd thought lost to her forever.

“Mother?”

She looked back at him, and Ben reached out his hand to her. 

“Will you stay with me? Just until I fall asleep, you don't have to—“

Leia cut him off by sitting down once more in her chair, his hand clasped tightly in both of hers. “Of course, Ben,” she replied as tears spilled over onto her cheeks. “I'll stay with you as long as you need me.”

*

They were able to disconnect most of the monitors the next day. A good night's rest and some food perked her up, and by mid-morning, Rey was feeling antsy as they rolled away the curtain dividing her from the bed to her left. Ben was in it, his mother at his side, and she grinned when she saw him.

“We did it,” she said triumphantly.

“We did,” he agreed.

Doctor Kalonia peeled away the bacta patches on her side and Rey hissed, looking down at the angry red-pink weal on her side. It wasn't a hole, at least, but it _hurt_ , and when the doctor probed it gently with gloved fingers it hurt even more.

“Stop poking at it!”

“I'm doing this so I can see if your nerves are regenerating in this area. What's the point in fixing the tissue if you can't feel it?” The doctor smiled at her though. “Luckily for you, it seems your nerves are all in order, and scans show that your internal organs are healing well. I don't advise getting into a pitched battle with a lightsaber-wielding opponent for at least a month until I'm sure that you're completely healed.”

“I don't think either of them are going to be fighting tyrants anytime soon.” Luke, standing between the feet of their beds. Leia had been called away for a meeting, and Luke had said he'd stay with both Rey and Ben for their checkups. “You've both earned some time off.”

“Can I get out of bed now?” Rey asked. Doctor Kalonia pursed her lips.

“I want to keep you one more night, just to be sure.”

“I feel fine!”

“Three days ago you had a hole in your abdomen and damage to both your small and large intestines, among other organs. You're a fighter, but I want to make sure you're healed before you go off fighting again.”

She moved on to Ben; whatever she felt about his past, she was thorough with her examination. For a moment after she'd finished she seemed about to say something, but whatever it was, she tamped it down. “No battles for you either, Ben Solo—what was that?”

Ben shifted. “I don't want to be called that,” he repeated, more loudly. “Just. Just Ben.”

Something about the doctor softened a bit, and she tapped a few things on the datapad slotted into the base of his bed. “All right. Ben. No battles, and no rescuing, but you're free to go.”

“Wait, why does he get to go?”

“Because he didn't get stabbed.” Doctor Kalonia checked a few more things on Ben's datapad and then set it back down in its cradle. “You're only in here one more night.”

Rey picked up one of Ben's stray thoughts – that he wouldn't mind staying an extra night, delaying the moment when he'd have to go be alone. She turned, looking over at him when the doctor and Luke left with her to consult.

“You won't be alone,” she said softly. “The bond's still there, so I'm still there.”

“You've got your family.” Ben wasn't looking at her, his hands plucking at the thin blanket. Rey reached out and brushed against his mind, watched his eyes half-close and a small smile cross his face.

“You _are_ my family,” she said. “You're an absolute jerk, but you're still my family. I look out for my own.”

He was silent for a moment, still picking at a loose thread until his hands stilled. “I'm supposed to believe you'll look out for me from a bed in here?”

Rey opened her mouth to start arguing when she saw he was still smiling, that there was a light in his eyes that she'd never seen before. She closed her mouth again and smiled back. “I've got my ways,” she replied. “Friends on the outside.”

“I'll believe it when I see it.”

*

His mother came back when the doctor officially released him. Ben was a little surprised to see her – he'd woken up in the morning and she'd been gone, which hadn't been much of a shock. But she was there, holding her hands out to help him stand. Rey watched jealously as he left the medbay, but he sensed it didn't run deeper than the surface and relaxed.

Leia took him back to the room he'd been in before. The guards were conspicuously absent.

“So how long before I'm transferred to Chandrila?”he asked. “I'm sure they think I'm a flight risk.”

His mother gave him a long, measuring look, then stepped past him to the small wardrobe. “I tried to find clothes on base that would fit you,” she said. “You've shot up, gotten broader... here.”

She handed him a pair of trousers, a tunic, boots. He put them on.

“The Chancellor,” Leia said, choosing her words carefully, “Has reconsidered her position. Given the great service you have rendered to the Resistance and to the Republic, she has chosen to be lenient.”

There was a ripple from her in the Force, and Ben thought about it for a moment as he took a jacket from her, slipping it on. Ryloth was heading into its cooler season anyway, but he was full of a cold that had nothing to do with that. “But?”

“But...” His mother's facade shook, then cracked and vanished, even as she kept her chin up and looked him in the eye. “I don't want to talk about it right now. There'll be a hearing in a few days. Right now I have my son back, my son who I thought was lost, and we have so much to talk about.”

Then she was embracing him, and after the initial surprise, Ben put his arms around her shoulders. She was a lot smaller than he remembered, but that wasn't the important part.

Ben smiled, resting his cheek on the top of her head, and closed his eyes.

*

Making a face, Rey batted away Luke's hand and gripped the pallet as she finally settled her full weight onto her feet. After a moment of standing, she eased her hold, and when she didn't fall over, she took a step. Everything seemed to work, and after a few steps the stiffness began to fade. 

Doctor Kalonia smiled. “See? It's not so bad. Our scans of your abdomen show that all regrowth is proceeding normally, so you're free to go. Just be careful.”

“We'll keep a close eye on her, Doctor,” Poe promised. “No heroics until you give her the all clear.”

“I'm so glad I can rely on you, Dameron.”

While Poe and Finn went off to get her some food from the mess, Luke and Mara both wrapped their arms around her. Rey bowed her head and let the embrace swallow her, tears running down her face. When the men returned the three of them broke apart, but Mara reached out and took Luke's hand, and there was such a sense of... comfort, belonging, with four of her favorite people in the room.

“You'd better eat,” Mara said. “We'll see you later, Rey.”

She cupped Rey's cheek. When they were gone, Rey put her fingers where her mother's hand had been.

“My family came back,” she whispered. 

The first one to get to her was Finn, and he pulled her in against his chest, his hand carding through her hair. Poe was at her back, his lips on her throat. His fingers slipped up under her tunic, over the new pink skin.

“Feels different,” he mumbled. His fingers were joined by Finn's.

“Just glad you're in one piece.” Finn pressed a kiss to her temple. “So we didn't know what you wanted and when we said it was for you the mess wanted to give us three of everything, so...”

They sat on the floor. She was glad they'd brought the food back; she wasn't sure she was ready for the press of other people right now, and some of the pilots could be enthusiastic. She wanted to just lean on Finn's shoulder with her feet in Poe's lap. And later, pressed skin to skin between the two of them, Rey settled Poe's hand on her hip, nestled down close. 

The last thing she saw before she fell asleep was the glimmer of her grandfather's lightsaber.

*

“We're told that you prefer to go by Ben, no surname. Is that correct?”

“It is.”

“So. Ben. Do you know why we have called you before us today?”

Ben had to bite back several formulated responses about the fact they were acting as though this _wasn't_ being held in the empty mess hall at an impromptu setup and that half the representatives of the Republic had just flown in the night before and were obviously wearing the same clothes they'd arrived in. “Because I have committed crimes against the New Republic,” he said, “Up to and including murder.”

“Yes. We are also informed – rather vehemently, by several individuals well-respected by this committee – that you risked your life to rescue valuable members of the Resistance from near-death.”

The Pantoran in the center, that was Chancellor Seila. He'd known her as an aide to Mon Mothma when he was growing up, when the government of the Republic was based on Chandrila. She'd come up in the galaxy. She folded her hands, leaning forward.

“We also know that you are personally responsible for the death of the Supreme Leader of the First Order, the being called Snoke,” she said. “Can you tell us what prompted these actions?”

“He threatened Rey.”

“Your cousin.”

“Yes.” 

“Now that he's gone, do you want to return to the First Order?”

Ben raised his eyebrows. “There isn't one anymore. Snoke is dead, Hux is in our custody.”

“There are other generals.”

He snorted. “None of them are Hux.”

“Perhaps the point of this meeting isn't clear to you.” Seila fixed him with a cool lavendar stare. “We are trying to determine how much of a risk you are. You have many defenders, as we've said, but that doesn't erase the fact that you are—were—Kylo Ren. There is a very long list of sins attached to that name, and regardless of your change of heart, that name is still attached to you.”

“So am I going to be put in prison, or—“

“That wasn't on the table.” Something must have shown on Ben's face, because Seila gave him a tight smile. “It has taken much deliberation to reach this point, and there are a great number of conditions that you will have to adhere to. But you have done an invaluable service to us. Your actions in the Sanctuary have saved _countless lives_. And... and it must have taken an incredible amount of bravery to turn on all you've known for so long. So we have decided to be lenient, to give you a chance to prove yourself.”

Ben felt that beautiful, light feeling from before lap against his heart. Just once before receding, but it was enough. “What do I have to do?”

Rey found him later. He'd leaped to the top of a boulder; Rey had made a show of scrambling up the rockfall, making way more noise than she needed to. It wasn't necessary – he'd known she was coming, he'd felt the press of her approach along their bond – but he'd appreciated that she hadn't wanted to sneak up on him.

“So,” she said, when she'd sat beside him for a few minutes. “Did they listen to me? Because I went to each one of them and I told them if they put you away—“

“I've been released into the care of my mother,” he said, and suddenly had an armful of cousin.

“You're staying out! You're staying with us! But Ben, that's _wonderful!_ ”

Awkwardly, Ben put an arm around her shoulders. Smiling still felt unfamiliar, but it was hard not to do it when Rey was literally radiating joy. “I've done a great service for the Republic, apparently.”

“You have!”

“They still don't really trust me.”

“But you've got a chance, now. To fix things.” She seemed to deliberate a moment, then reached into her pouch and pulled out their grandfather's lightsaber. “This is the second time I've offered it to someone,” she said, holding it out to him. “The first time hasn't turned out so bad.”

“Why not...” Ben swallowed, staring at the burnished metal. For years he'd wanted this, thought it belonged to him, hated that it flew to her hand and not his. It had finally answered his call, and yet... “Why not keep it?”

“It doesn't feel right anymore. And I want to make my own.” Rey cocked her head, staring at the hilt. “You killed Snoke with this. It should go to you.”

He reached out, his fingertips hovering over the grip. He could feel it in his palm, knew the weight of it, could almost see the blue-white blade spring from the emitter. Then he could see it sticking out of Snoke's chest, felt the old parasite's ghostly fingers rattling around in his skull, and shuddered, gently pushing the lightsaber away.

“It's seen too much pain,” he said, the words coming from within but also from without, as though others spoke through him. “And I've got enough of my own to carry. This is a second chance. I should make my own lightsaber, too.”

He half expected her face to fall, for her to be disappointed in him, but instead Rey just grinned even more and tucked the lightsaber away again. “We can figure it out together, then,” she said matter-of-factly. “I've looked at some old holos already and I _think_ I've got some ideas for how to improve efficiency and a way to toggle between blade length, because sometimes you don't need a _saber_ so much as a _cutting tool_ , and why can't it be multipurpose? And did you know that the old Jedi had lightsabers that were _double bladed?_ It'd be like my staff!”

She continued on, throwing out ideas about crystal structure and circuitry lightning-fast, and Ben let himself drift in the newfound peace between them. After a while he caught a stray thought from her – amusement, and gladness that he was so relaxed. But it didn't only come from her.

_I'm so proud of you, my grandson._

His eyes half-open, Ben smiled a little, the sun on his face.

*

_I told you they could do it._ More forcefully: _And this is the last time you will use my family for something like this. Light and dark can now shift back into balance._

_They're your children, Anakin,_ a second voice said. It was long-suffering, but fond. _I'm afraid that you passed on your talent for finding trouble._

_And for getting out of it again, Master._

_With those two, blazing so strong together that they nearly blind us all? We can only hope so. They're both entirely too much like their grandparents._

*

Rey grinned when Finn, his brow furrowed in concentration, levitated her empty drink cup from her tray to his own. It wasn't a distance of more than six inches, but for someone who had two full days of training under his belt, it was a fine start. 

“Great,” Poe grumbled, his eyes sparkling out from under his curls so they knew he didn't mean any of his complaining. “There are _two_ of you. How am I supposed to keep up with two young, strong Jedi?”

“We'll sort it.” Rey bumped his shoulder with hers. “Besides, you still fly circles around anyone here.”

“Even without magical Jedi powers?”

“Hey, I'm only _barely_ a Jedi,” Finn told him. “Not like Rey or Master Skywalker.”

“You'll be great when you're trained up. Just promise me your lightsaber won't be red.”

A pulse of light in her heart made Rey shut her mouth on what she'd been about to say. Slowly, she drew out the lightsaber that had been her father's and grandfather's, and held it out to Finn, who went very quiet and still.

“Rey,” he said after a moment. “I can't, it's—it's yours, isn't it?”

“Not anymore,” she said. “It needs someone with a heart like yours, Finn. You were the first person who showed me any kindness when I'd been alone for so long. You saved the life of a man who did everything he could to ruin yours. It... it belongs with you. Please, take it.”

“I think she's saying that you and me are practically Skywalkers anyway, so even saying that it belongs with her family isn't going to work,” Poe stage-whispered across the table. “I've heard how you used that thing, anyway. I saw a little back on Takodana. You're not half bad.”

“Thanks.” Finn sounded dazed though, his eyes round as he took the hilt from Rey, turning it over in his hands. “Rey... you're sure?”

“I'm sure. This is right, this is how it's supposed to be.”

Leaning her head on Poe's shoulder, Rey watched as Finn set the hilt down on the table, then snatched it back up and clipped it to his belt. Every few bites he'd reach down, touch the hilt, and she'd feel a spark of joy and _rightness_.

_It's called love, little one._

She turned her head slightly. In the corner of the room, Anakin Skywalker stood unseen by all but her. He was smiling, and his eyes were bright, and she felt something like the affectionate brush of fingers over the crown of her head.

_The Force will be with you, Rey,_ he said. _Always._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't like Kylux, you can end this series here and it'll be fine. I wrote it that way on purpose because I know that's not everyone's thing. But the sequel so far has a lot of nonsense and hilariousness and feelings in it, so if you're into that kind of thing, you're welcome to come along when it gets posted!
> 
> As always, questions/comments/chatter welcome at my [tumblr!](teslatricity.tumblr.com)


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